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THE DOWNING LEGENDS 

Stories In IRb^me 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH 

THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS 

THE GENTLE EARL 

THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE 



> 



w'. Deforest 



AUTHOR OF A LOVER'S REVOLT, THE ODDEST OF COURTSHIPS, IRENE THE MISSIONARY, 
PLAYING THE MISCHIEF, JUSTINE'S LOVERS, HONEST JOHN VANE, THE WETHER- 
ELL AFFAIR, KATE BEAUMONT, OVERLAND, MISS RAVENEL'S CONVERSION, 
SEACLIFF, EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE, ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE, 
WITCHING TIMES, ETC., ETC. 



J 1 J J 1 } 



NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT 
The TuTtLE, Morehouse & Taylor Company 

PUBLISHERS AND PRINTERS 
19OI 
V. • 






THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

JUN. 24 1901 

Copyright entry 

CLASS ^XXc N». 

COPY 8. 





Copy 


right, 
by 


igoi, 


J 


OHN VV 


. DEb 


'OREST 



C < C c c 



CONTENTS. 



Prelude, ..... 
The Witch of Shiloh, . 
The Last of the Wampanoag-s, 
The Gentle Earl, 
The Enchanted Voyag"e, . 



Page 

ix 

3 

55 

117 

157 



PREFACE 



In regard to form the Downing Legends are 
rhymed "magazine stories." 

In regard to spirit they are extravaganzas. They 
will not be liked except by readers who like such 
works as the Odyssey, the Arabian Nights, the 
Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo and Berni, the 
Orlando Furioso of Ariosto, the Pilgrim's Progress, 
Gulliver's Travels, Knickerbocker's History of New 
York, and Hawthorne's Wonder Tales. 

Of course Downing is American "manifest destiny" 
in a whimsical guise. As to an exact correspondence 
between his adventures and our national doings I 
leave that question to Congress, the Supreme Court 
and the American people, sitting in joint referendum. 

These adventures will no doubt be stigmatized by 
critic Gradgrind as incredible, unpractical and absurd. 
From his judgment I appeal confidently, like any 
other author, to remote posterity. 

Good old Mr. Feeble Alind (well known to admirers 
of Bunyan) will also have somewhat to say, which 
will not be clearly understood, and so need not be 
answered, at least not prophetically. 



PRELUDE 



Ah, who would doubt that blessed ghosts 
Do often comfort woful men ? 

Ah, who would hold that seraph hosts 
Are never plain to mortal ken ? 

I gladly think that souls forgiven 
Glide often through this sinful den. 

And longing gaze where clouds are riven 

To watch the angels float from Heaven. 

Nor less in whistling nights of storm 

I lean to hear the elfin lays ; 
Or half behold some sheeted form 

Approaching through the bosky ways ; 
Or, marking eyes of owlet brighten, 

I know the vampyre's deadly gaze; 
Or, hearing sound of footsteps heighten, 
I turn to face some hell-born Titan. 

But ah, how feeble is my sight ! 

Our fathers could not choose but spy 
The things I follow day and night 

With doubting heart and baffled eye. 
They saw the upper world and under. 

The saintly cohorts gleaming high, 
The gates of glory wheeled asunder, 
The Lord of glory clothed in thunder. 



THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

And, near at hand, Creation's blot, 
They saw the crew of Endless Wail, 

The wicked dead who slumber not. 
The warlock dancing in the dale, 

The wizard Lapp, the troll of Sweden, 
The gory ghoul, the vampyre pale, 

The awful princes hurled from Eden, 

And all the murky brood they lead on. 

No doubt the wonderworld is gone ; 

'Tis farther than the Milky Way. 
Afreet is fled, and troll, and faun. 

And gleesome elf, and kindly fay ; 
And those who knew them fierce or tender 

Are turned to Jong- forgotten clay : 
But oh, has life so wild a splendor 
As when the Hebrew sought to Endor? 

As when the triton clove the wave, 
The naiad twined her golden hair, 

The satyr haunted copse and cave. 
And griffins sparkled through the air? 

When Dionysus piped to dances, 

And Ceres smiled behind the share? 

When Ares led the leveled lances. 

And Phoebus voiced the sybil's trances? 

They died ; all died ; then lived again. 

The names were new, the creatures old. 
The mermaid trolled the syren strain. 

The lorelei combed the sylphic gold; 



EXPLANATORY NOTES. 



i8 


I 


21 


35 


24 


28 


39 


18 



The Witch of Shiloh. 

Section. Line. 

2 24 Gi/es Cory was pressed to death at Salem, 1692, for 
refusing to plead to the charge of witchcraft. 

Eyen = Eyes. 

Flytcd = fhtted. 

Throwed a transfovviation. From "Threw a fit." 

Nipton. Old seashore form of Neptune, sometimes 
used for Satan. 
30 Shingle whacking. Spinning a toad aloft by put- 
ting it on one end of a balanced shingle and hit- 
ting the other end with a bludgeon. 



The Last of the Wampaxoags. 

I 2 Baldybird. The bald eagle. 

4 24 Metacom = King Philip, or Philip of Pokanoket. 
Killed 1676. 
30 3 ]Vithouten = without. 



The Gentle Earl. 

5 II To iveet = To wit ; to know ; to note. 
17 12 Brandon's Isle^St. Brandon's Isles. 
20 6 A-gley =z Astray. 



THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 



The Enchanted Voyage. 



20 Guildhall's demiurges. Two wooden statues, popu- 
larly called Gog and Magog, formerly in the 
Guildhall, London. 
Eftersoon = aftersoon ; soon after. 
Skinners—Tory cow-thieves. 
Yore ago = Long ago. 

Shooken hands. Surviving in country usage fifty 
or sixty years ago. n 

2"] II vS)!>a« = Spun ; whirled. "When Adam delved and 

Eve span." 
30 12 Ben. Disused form of are. 



5 


I 


6 


34 


19 


16 


22 


6 



PRELUDE. XI 

The wizard stepped the bacchic measure ; 

The brownie trode the satyr's wold ; 
The dragon watched the griffin's treasure ; 
Pan, king of fairies, wrought his pleasure. 

Another change ! The life is fled 

Anew from mountain, grove and stream. 

The gods and fays alike are dead. 
Man recollects them as a dream. 

What oldwife bows before the lares? 
What prophet sees the seraphs gleam ? 

What chieftain calls on haughty Ares ? 

Who fears the elves or loves the fairies ? 

If any wight should stammer tale 

Of times when Hell and Paradise 
Were not as yet beyond the veil. 

But near and clear to human eyes, 
I marvel much if men would hail him 

With cheering welcome in their eyes. 
Or stop the wincing ear and scale him 
To Pandemonium's inky Baalim. 

Yet certain gnomes of olden time 

Have haunted long my bosom's hearth, 

Attuning flimsy pipes of rhyme 
To fyttes of weirdly woe or mirth. 

Unwilling guests who strive and clamor 
To errant forth and pester earth 

With limping lays of bygone glamor, 

Perchance withouten sense or grammar. 



THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

I bid them go; I bid them hurtle. 

Go forth, ye sprites of buried ages ! 
Go seek the oHve, or the myrtle, 

On fairy steeds of printed pages ; 
Go where the critic barbs his arrow, 

And where the red reviewer rages ; 
Go ride your raid and hush your haro 
In storied urn or stoneless barrow ! 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH 



THE DOWNING LEGENDS 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH 



The night was marvelous to hear ; 

It had a strangely mingled mell. 
It bellowed like a raging mere ; 

It hissed with flights of spirits fell. 
The night was like a demon's dream, 

(A demon dreaming deep in hell), 
A dream of blast and roar and gleam 
And formless horror throned supreme. 

If ever demons dream, I think 

They surely dream on such a night. 

The sky was like a sky of ink ; 

The lightning could not give it light. 

It seemed as though a dragon whirled 
Gigantic wings athwart the sight ; 

As though an endless dragon curled 

His wings and talons round the world. 

I think that surely monsters flew 
That night to tear our feeble earth ; 

I think that surely Satan blew 

His trumpet round creation's girth ; 



THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

And every evil creature heard ; 

The black cat bounded from the hearth, 
The he-goat leaped, the owlet whirred, 
The goblin flapped, the wizard spurred. 

Around the gallows-tree they came, 
Around the pirate's corse they flung; 

They danced a dance without a name. 
They sang a song in unknown tongue. 

The demons capered, great and small; 
The witches capered, old and young ; 

And, smirking through his iron thrall, 

The dead man capered over all. 

II 

Immortal Downing ! Only he 
Misfht brave the darkness, rain and thunder 
To reach the haunted gallows-tree 
And drive the weirdly swarm from under. 

But Adam Downing stood for more 
Than any common valiant spirit ; 
His patriarchal essor bore 
The germ of Yankee might and merit. 
A demiurge, a type, a fate, 
Precursor of a coming nation. 
His heart was pure, his aim was straight. 
His sabre-stroke, predestination; 
And therefore might be fare alone 
To seek the prancing Endor rabble 
And smite it unto coasts unknown 
As fast as broom and goat could scrabble. 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 

Thus much of argument is meet 
Before the muses pour their coffers 
Of magic pearls beneath the feet 
Of scientists and other scoffers. 
For many, mired in sloughs of doubt, 
Presume to scorn the wondrous story, 
And swear that witchcraft dribbled out 
When Salem flattened Goodman Co^\^ 
But we who hold what elders told, 
We know from Downing's Commentaries 
That Satan troubled Shiloh's fold 
With spooks and spunkies thick as berries ; 
That wizard bites and pricks and stitches 
Were commoner than coughs and sneezing, 
And those who least believed in witches 
Were most perplexed with hellish teasing. 



Ill 

Mid levin gleam and thunder rattle 
Our hero fought his parlous battle; 
He routed Sataw's hideous minions 
And strowed the ways with demon-pinions, 
With mangled goat and broomstick broken, 
Chaldean scroll and wizard token ; 
He chased the myriad mongrel muddle 
Through dripping wold and splashing puddle 
Till not an imp could raise a bellow 
And not a warlock find his fellow; 
In short, he quelled the magian revel 
And spoiled the picnic of the devil. 



THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Then, panting from his godHke labor, 
He sheathed his yard or two of sabre 
And homeward through the darkness stumbled. 
Rude march ! The thunder-billows rumbled ; 
The lightning shot demoniac flashes, 
As though 'twould scorch the skies to ashes ; 
The sheeted flurries hissed and rattled 
Like volleys poured by ranks embattled; 
The earth was mud, the air was water. 
And Downing streaming like an otter. 

But while he toiled through mud and mystery. 
The dampest hero known to history. 
He chanced to spy beneath a thicket 
A damsel crouching like a cricket, 
A lassie weird in garb and feature, 
Who seemed to him a wizard creature. 
One leap ! a panther leap ! He caught her, 
And homeward on his shoulder brought her. 



IV 

A child the captive seemed ta him, 
Or scarcely more — a half-ripe maiden ; 
But fierce of temper, strong in limb. 
And Downing traveled heavy laden. 

Moreover, all around, a swarm 
Of sombre phantoms beat and bayed ; 
Yea, many lords of night and storm 
Arrived to aid the elfin maid ; 
Now clutching her athwart the brumes, 
And pulling here and pushing there; 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 

Now lifting her on mighty plumes 
Till Downing fairly walked in air; 
Now. twining vines across his way 
And plunging him aslant in mire; 
Now deftly leading him astray 
With dodging wisps of fairy fire. 
And all the while they called a name, 
The Tyrian name of Yesebel, 
Or uttered titles weirdly sweet, 
Becoming high born eldritch dame; 
Or showered kisses on her feet 
And pleaded, ''Come, O Damozel!" 
As 't were a dauphiness of hell. 

But, drawing near to Downing's roof, 
A change befel the stormy glamor; 
The shoal of phantoms swerved aloof 
And wailing shuddered through its clamor, 
As though eolian darkness cried 
Its hate and fear of coming dawn, 
Or souls of wildernesses sighed 
Adieu to dryad, sylph and faun; 
And when our sturdy champion bore 
The captive through his cottage door. 
Unearthly shadows backward drew 
And midnight poured a last adieu. 
"Farewell ;" its voices seemed to wail. 
''Farewell, O queen of night and gale ! 
Farewell till womanhood shall yearn, 
And all your pulses cry. Return!" 



THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 



No doubt the grubbing mole denies 
That Phoebus shines along the skies, 
And judges prairies by the root 
Of grass that snares his toilsome foot. 
No doubt he holds in sand-blind scorn 
The tales of creatures Eden-born; 
Of dazzling seraphim who bare 
Response to patriarchal prayer ; 
Of darkling wiles and whispers weird 
That made our fervent sires afeard. 
He teaches what he feels — no more ; 
And worms revere his groundling lore, 
Believe creation's secret lies 
Behind the fillets of his eyes, 
And clamor, ''Hail, Professor Mole, 
Who proves the corpse, disproves the soul !" 

Alas ! we dwell in carnal times ; 
If spirits live, they live in rhymes. 
Alone the poet keeps the faith. 
Alone believes in imp and wraith. 
Alone discerns Elysian coasts, 
The angel ranks, the goblin hosts; 
In all the earth no other gaze 
Sees Eblis nights or Eden days. 

I pause. The matter rolls too wide. 
The farther shore is undescried. 
I call in vain. The awful sea 
Replies in tongues unknown to me. 
Yea, tiny ripples nearest land 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 

Speak words I cannot understand, 
No voyager across that mere 
Returns with news for mortal ear, 
And therefore must I haste away 
To dream the flimsy dreams I may. 



VI 

"Farewell !" the parting demons wept 
As Downing shut the world without. 
Then silence fell ; the thunder slept ; 
The goblin tempest lulled its shout. 
The captive ceased to moan and struggle. 
And showed a gracious mind to snuggle. 

A winsome, winning lass she seemed 
As ever bard or painter dreamed, 
With gipsy cheek of fervent bloom, 
And fleeces black as raven's plume 
That curled in glossy rings above 
A brow Hellenic gods might love. 
Such maidens danced in Syrian nights 
Beneath Astarte's madding lights, 
Or waved to Baal the wine and corn, 
Or wept for Tammuz' drooping horn. 
In Paphian grove, in Grecian tongue, 
Such russet damsels leaped and sung, 
Or glinted through the rippling foam 
To welcome argent Venus home. 

Most wondrous were the lassie's eyes ; 
They dreamed of myths and mysteries ; 
They sparkled coaxings, lures and loves ; 



THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

They had as many tints as cloves ; 

They twinkled galaxies of light, 

And yet out-ravened blackest night. 

They touched her captor's heart; he smiled 

With sudden kindness on the child ; 

Then signed his only daughter near, 

And said, 'T bring a sister here.'' 



VII 

So Esther Downing gently kissed 
The radiant child of midnight mist, 
Arrayed her cleanly, gave her meat 
And room upon the ingle seat, 
Nor ceased the while to ask her name 
And question her of whence she came. 

But little would the stranger speak, 
Though frolic dimpled chin and cheek. 
One only tale had she to tell ; 
She laughed, ''My name is Yesebel." 
Meantime so beautiful was she. 
So brimming bright with childish glee, 
So seeming innocent in soul. 
And ignorant of fear or dole, 
As though sidereal night had blown 
A cherub from beside the Throne, 
And dropped it through New England air 
To show that Paradise is fair. 

And Downing, gazing on her grace. 
Surmised a child of gentle race, 
Beguiled or rapt by spooks unclean 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. I I 

To wear the crown of elfin-queen, 
But infant pure as yet in mind 
And fit to mate with human kind. 
So, holding faith that Yankee roof 
Would slur the airy fiends aloof, 
He settled with his stubborn will 
To father her, for good or ill. 

VIII 

Now flitted many a peaceful day. 
Such days as worthy vShiloh knew 
When Satan went his darkling way 
And led afar his graceless crew. 

No longer midnight rang agen 
With goblin hoots and wizard cries ; 
No longer writhed the sons of men 
On pins, like learning's butterflies. 
No more, athwart the wailing rain. 
Athwart the tempest's angry hum, 
Did vague, unearthly voices plain 
To Yesebel, and bid her come ; 
Aye, weep to her as mothers weep 
To darlings vanishing beneath 
A rushing billow's curling steep. 
An arrowy river's foam and seethe. 

The damsel grew by Downing's hearth 
As fresh and pure as any flower 
That findeth hospitable earth 
And kindly sun and kissing shower. 
She quickened all the hero's frame 



3 2 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

To gladness when she smiled or spoke 
She made a spring of blossoms flame 
From out that rugged heart of oak. 



IX 

Nor less did Esther twine and fold 
The tendrils of her blooming May 
About the waif of storm and wold, 
And hold her dearer day by day. 
Full sisterly the damsels kept 
Each other close in loving palms, 
Together laughed, together wept. 
Together sang the sabbath psalms. 

For Yesebel appeared as pure 
As ever breeze that summer stirs ; 
No weird perfume, no naughty lure 
Exhaled from any word of hers. 
The knowledge of the wizard past 
Had faded from her merry brain, 
As one may see a dusky mast 
Go down behind a shining main. 
She knew no single wicked thing. 
No cabalistic sign or spell, 
Nor any stave that sorcerers sing 
To greet the seignories of hell. 

Forbidden carols, which before 
Defiled her dainty coral mouth. 
Had died like bubbles on the shore, 
Had gone like swallows flitted south. 
She knew not whence she came, nor how 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 1 3, 

The elfin past was all a haze ; 

If any one recalled it now, 

She mutely stared in prim amaze. 

She held herself the very kin 

Of those who daily kissed her face, 

And found their sweetest joyaunce in 

Communing with her sunny grace. 



O change, mutation, miracle ! 
How many lives we live in one ! 
We hear a tinkling, tiny bell : 
A curtain falls : a scene is done. 
Another opens : all is new — 
The actors, motives, joy and pain: 
The past has disappeared like dew; 
And yet we love and hate again. 

O bright illusions ! hopes like fires, 
That quickened youth's aspiring feet ! 
Swift inclinations, strong desires. 
Of old so steady in their seat ! 
Enchanted towers, a moment shown ! 
Tiaras round a spectre's head ! 
Where are you ? — Shattered ! overthrown ! 
The creatures that we were, are dead. 



XI 

So flitted thirty tranquil moons. 
And every day this Yesebel 
Increased her store of dainty boons 



14 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

That dower a beauteous damozel. 
Fair, too, was Esther, passing fair. 
With faintly flusht carnehan skin. 
And floods of sunlight through her hair. 
And eyes revealing Heaven within. 

And many loved them, many came 
To bow before their dawn of charms : 
High-stepping squires of county fame 
For spacious homes and fruitful farms ; 
Some worshipping the holy skies 
That Esther's lashes drooped above; 
Some dazzled by those gipsy eyes 
That seemed to promise storms of love. 

And there was one, the favored one. 
The largest, richest soul of all. 
Whose lyric accents deftly spun 
Round human hearts a wizard thrall ; 
Whose eloquence had tones sublime. 
That startled while they lured the soul. 
Like some resounding churchly chime 
A-swing betwixt delight and dole ; 
Or, choosing thus, could swiftly wake 
The stormy throbs of fervid blood, 
And cause the waves of love to break 
On all the shores of womanhood. 

No squire was he of carnal mould, 
With burly frame and beefy hand. 
Attired in velvet, lace and gold 
And boasting miles of fenced land. 
The pastor of the fold he was. 
Where Yesebel and Esther bowed 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 1 5 



Beneath the glare of Sinai's laws, 
Or saw the bow behind the cloud. 
He looked a very Nazarite, 
Assured to holiness from birth, 
A spirit clothed in saintly white, 
Almost a visitant on earth. 
And many, gazing- on his face 
And groping for the soul within, 
Believed him born a child of grace, 
Who never knew the load of sin. 

Such was ApoUos Himmelstone, 
A flower of starry gardens, sown 
As though by angels, here below. 
To show how Eden's roses blow. 



XII 

If any maid of mortal clay 

Should love a bright seraphic sprite. 
Should worship him for many a day, 

And feel as nothing in his sight; 
And then should hear him call her near 

And meekly tell his angel love. 
Beseeching her to hold him dear 

And bide with him in realms above ; 
I think her happiness would be 

Immense, intense as any dole ; 
And marvel like a billowing sea 
* Would almost drown her throbbing soul. 



1 6 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

XIII 

Such happiness to Esther fell. 
She heard this gracious levite tell 
His love, and plead to win her own ; 
She sate on love's imperial throne, 
A queen of love; but ah, how meek! 
What humble tears upon her cheek ! 
She spoke ; the lips would scarcely part 
The words were sobs, but gave a heart. 
So they were plighted, sweetly sworn 
As one to joy, as one to mourn. 
As one to tread the pilgrim's path 
And fly the city doomed to wrath. 
As one to seek the Joyous Heights 
And Beulah's shades and Eden's 'lights. 

Their voices mingled in the psalms, 
They mingled in the sighs of prayer 
They interchanged the precious balms 
That angels fling through earthly air ; 
Wing interlocked with wing they flew 
Above the birthplace of the dew 
To where — . Ah, realm of mysteries, 
Too high, too pure, for sinful eyes ! 
The mortal glance must turn away, 
The worldly songster check his lay. 

XIV 

So other peaceful moons went by. 
O gladsome moons, why should ye die? 
Why should the perfect-circled light 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 1/ 

Of joyannce dwindle into night? 

Alas ! how many roses bloom 

To shed their petals o'er a tomb ! 

There was a lily of the vale. 

There was ! Where is she ? Ask the gale. 

There came a change in Esther's dream 
Of life. It took a nightmare cast. 
She rowed in vain against a stream. 
A shadow threatened ; spectres passed. 
There came a phantom, vague but grim, 
A fitful looking-for of wrong 
Betwixt her loving heart and him 
Who lately made her life a song. 

There came a change in Yesebel, 
A transformation hard to tell, 
A marvel wrought by ancient spell, 
A bubble rising through a mere 
But lately crystal pure and clear, — 
A bubble from the founts of hell. 
Aye, suddenly this saintly thing 
Became as weird as any fay 
That ever haunted moonlit spring 
Before the elder faiths were grey. 
In other maids it might have been 
The pranksomeness of youthful mood, 
The witchery of years of teen. 
The dazing dawn of womanhood. 
With Yesebel it seemed to be 
A swift revulsion tow'rd the mind 
And memories of days when she 
Was one of Elfiand's darkling- kind. 



1 8 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Aroused — no matter how — who knows ? 

A dormant nature waked again, 

A resurrected maenad rose, 

A fettered syren burst her chain. 



XV 

Her eyes were hke to haunted wells 
Where guileful necromancy dwells, 
And beckons those who gaze therein 
To enter gorgeous halls of sin 
That glow beneath the wizard wave 
Like Eden courts, but hide a grave. 

Her eyes were beautifully strange, 
Alive with tender, melting change 
Of many colors, many beams. 
Commixed and sweet as fairy dreams, 
But aye, whatever tint they caught, 
Right perilous to tranquil thought, 
And fit to drive an anchorite, 
For safety, into desert night, 
Or make a seraph close his eyes 
And wing his way to sheltering skies. 
No younker looked between their brims 
Without a thrill in heart and limbs, 
A something like delicious fear 
That startled much, yet lured anear. 
As though a little bird he were. 
Bewildered by a serpent's stare. 

Moreover, when she walked with men 
In forest wavs, or even when 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. I9 

She flouted them in rompish games 
Beneath the gaze of puckered dames, 
Her beauty breathed a weird perfume 
(More luscious than of rose in bloom) 
That made whoever stood anigh 
Turn dreamy-gentle in the eye, 
And deeply breathe to catch again 
The sorcer}^ that thrilled his brain, 
Nor care if elders leaned askance 
To study him with surly glance. 



XVI 

Alas, what puny fences rise 
'Twixt Eden blooms and asps of hell ! 
The pastor's heart was Paradise, 
Yet everywhere twined Yesebel. 
While guarding seraphs wept or slept 
Within and all about she slid. 
Athwart the valley lilies crept, 
Among the Sharon roses hid. 
Or bent the fair forbidden fruit 
To longing hands that trembled nigh. 
And caroled sweet as Lydian lute, 
''Behold ye shall not surely die." 

How falls the saint, the shining one 
Who walked in righteousness and faith, 
Whose earnest feet had almost won - 
The heights beyond affright or skaith. 
The gladsome mounts that Christian clomb 
To see the road no longer dim, 



20 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

And, fair ahead, the heavenly home 
Ablaze with stars and seraphim ? 
Alas ! full oft the noblest fall, 
The sweetest heart, the richest brain ; 
The soul that loveth best of all, 
By love is often snared and slain. 

XVII 

There came a time Apollos led 
Two lives, diverse as yea and nay : 
An open life, a life of day ; 

Another when the day was dead : 

One wrenched by anguishes of prayer 
And wrestlings after penitence : 
Another bound in carnal sense 

And haled by princes of the air. 

Like one who hath two guardian sprites, 
(The one a fiend, an angel, one) 
He walked with Esther 'neath the sun. 

With Yesebel through wizard nights. 

The world that knew his morning mood 
Believed him fit for Eden meads ; 
The world that shared his darkling deeds 

Esteemed him one of Belial's brood. 

How many live (ah, who can tell 

But One who watcheth from the skies?) 
How many live such life of lies. 

Such double life of Heaven and Hell? 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 21 



XVHI 



Yea, only otherworldly eyen 
Perceived the pastor's star grow pale. 
How could iinshriven saint divine 
That holiness like his might fail? 
Yet now and then, and yet agen 
An airy shoal of whispers stole 
From home to home of awestruck men 
Concerning her who snared his soul. 
Aye, babblings fathered none knew where, 
(Such tales as mumbling beldames tell) 
Like whirling snowflakes filled the air. 
All drifting thick round Yesebel. 
• No wonder tattle chose her out : 
Outlandish seemed her gipsy gaze; 
Her story was a thing of doubt. 
And elfin-strange were all her ways. 
To wit, a-many times she larked 
Such trills as deacons never pitched. 
So syren-sweet that whoso harked 
Stood open-mouthed like wight bewitched. 
Full often chanted she like this 
To girlish mate and rustic swain 
Until they blushed with foolish bliss 
And pleaded for the lilt again. 

Whence came these magian minstrelsies 
No learned doctor e'er divined ; 
Perchance they were but memories 
Of nursing runes her grandam whined; 
Perchance (as rigid spirits held) 



22 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

A former life sent echoes down 
Of psalms that dancing brownies yelled 
To her who wore the wizard crown. 
For oft of Lady Moon she hymned, 
How bright she made the fairy knoll, 
And how her loving maenads brimmed 
With joy unknown to Quaker soul. 

XIX 

It Cometh hard to mortal men 
To write a rune from wizard lips, 
For weirdly fingers jog the pen 
And blunders gambol where it trips ; 
While, underneath the table-baize. 
Demoniac jokers hammer through 
A rigmarole of naughty lays 
That worthy fairy never knew. 
Yet noble Downing (mouth of gold) 
Hath handed down the wonder-story 
That oftentime his elfling trolled 
This hymn to midnight's queen of glory. 

Hear me, O mighty one, 

Victor of Day, 
Queen of the starry band, 

Regent of Night ! 
Mount from the dying sun. 

Fly from the Faraway, 
Come to the Fairyland, 

Come in thy might ! 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 2^ 

Give me to reign for thee ! 

Give me to reign, 
Ruling the reahn of fays 

Far and anigh, 
Making all bow the knee, 

Kneel with bewildered brain, 
Worship with longing gaze, 

Worship and die ! 



XX 

But gossips muttered stranger things. 
They told that every moonlit night 
She hasted forth (belike on wings) 
And sought a lonesome windy height 
Where anthemed hoarse an oaken wood ; 
And all the argent way she sang 
In tongues no Christian understood 
Till every bell of echo rang 
And magic tumbled forth her brood. 

Such roundelays she trilled, so sweet, 
So full of necromantic power. 
That brownies came on pranksome feet 
And fairies leaped from every flower; 
All trooping lightly tow'r'd a glade 
Of turf amid the wizard wold. 
Where roundabout they danced and played 
As woodlings used in days of old. 
Moreover, when the magic swarm 
Dissolved and Yesebel returned, 
Above her many a winged form 



24 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Of fay and g-nome like fireflies burned 
Rejoicing sprites, with kindly eyes 
As pure as jeweleries of dew, 
And lips that had a pouting guise 
Of blowing kisses while they flew. 



XXI 

Yea, further, all the voices woke 
That peopled night in years agone. 
From roaring wooded waste they spoke. 
From tinkling brook and sighing lawn. 
Around the eldritch girl's abode 
They circled, lifting plaintive trills 
And harmonies that cooed and flowed 
Like yearning notes of whippoorwills : 
Faint solos rolling into choirs 
That sudden fell, then sharply rose, 
Like carols from eolian wires 
When winter through the casement blows : 
Enchanters summoning their mate 
(Perchance a mate, perchance their queen), 
Till morning chased the goblin state 
And power of darkness from the scene. 

But ever, when the tempest yelled 
And lightning tore the sheeted rain. 
The magic music keened and swelled 
Like choruses of souls in pain ; 
And through the windy midnight pressed 
An eager train of pallid flights 
That ringed the lassie's sleeping nest 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 25 

And beat against her window-lights ; 
Now driving aimless here and there 
As fitfully as shapes of dream, 
Or bats and other waifs of air, 
Bewildered by a lantern's gleam ; 
Now beckoning with filmy hands 
And signing her to fare with them 
Through lurid night to far-off lands, 
Perchance to wear a diadem ; 
While ever and anon they purled 
Imploring runes in speech unknown, 
For ages flyted from the world, 
Or known to wizard wight alone. 
One word was clear in all the mell; 
That single word was Yesebel. 



XXII 

Thus came the fairies oftentime, 
As visible to mortal gaze 
As phosphor-sheen of tropic clime. 
Or waves of borealis rays. 
And those who sentried from above 
Affirmed that they were sweet to see 
As any shape that painters love. 
Or poets dream, or hermits flee ; 
While others, watching from below, 
Half blinded by telluric air, 
(Or viewing clearly; who can know?) 
Spied nothing holy, nothing fair. 

They said the radiances of night 



26 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Endured an evil second birth 
And shed their garniture of Hght 
Whenever they approached the earth ; 
That each renounced his pearly guise 
For ugliness as black as soot 
And looked the villain Sire of lies 
From horned head to cloven foot. 
And like enow our fallen star 
Flas potency to soil and mar 
The sheen of whatsoever plume 
Adventures through its sinful brume; 
For well we know that long ago 
Gods made the Syrian welkin glow, 
Who lost anon their hallowed fame 
To find Avernian name and shame. 



XXIII 

And Downing tells a ghastly tale, 
Affirming in his Commentaries 
That haunting sprites of nightly gale 
Are swart of skin as whortleberries. 

''As black," he adds, ''as any kittle 
That ever shamed a slattern's ingle ; 
An' every Shiloh chug kin whittle 
Superior fairies from a shingle. 

"I watched 'em through my kitchen winders, 
A-whirlin' down the blowy weather, 
Now scalin' round like paper cinders, 
Now flockin clost as bees together. 
The wings were flimsy, torn an' scurvy. 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 2/ 

Consid'able like paper money ; 

An' when they tumbled topsy-turvy, 

'Twas partly horrid, partly funny ; 

While as for music, any boodle 

Of summer frogs in Shiloh ditches. 

Will yowp a sweeter Yankee-Doodle 

Than all your sing^in'-schools of witches. 

"The boys who squinted from the garret 
Reported quite another story, 
Pretendin' they could skurcely bear it. 
The figgers glinted sech a glory. 
But youth is fearfully deludin'; 
It's eyes are big as bushel measures ; 
An' whipsters allays are concludin' 
Forbidden spitzenbergs are treasures ; 
While we, who mowed our craps to stubble 
In fields as wide as theirn, an' wider, 
Know thoroughly through toil an' trouble 
That Sodom fruit makes awful cider. 



XXIV 

''Jest here I suddintly remember 
That certain neighbors grumbled roundly 
Because I didn't scoot up chember 
An' switch my gipsy lassie soundly ; 
Believin' (very like with reason) 
That she was queen of certain devils 
Who sartinly would hold it treason 
To bring her trouble by their revels ; 
An' holdin forth (perhaps correckly) 



28 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

That sech an arnest kind of dealin' 
U'd scart the 'tarnal coots direckly 
An' hazed 'em oiit'n Shiloh squeaHn'. 

''An here I'm druv to make confession, 
Although it hurts hke puUin' grinders ; 
But times there be of dark possession, 
An' wiser men have worn the bHnders. 
The jade was sech a tearin' beauty. 
An' looked so leetle like a sinner, 
I couldn't squarely face my duty 
An' say that Uncle Hob was in her. 
I hate to larrup gals like cattle ; 
My heart preferred to resk a sally; 
An' thus I soon declared for battle, 
Though waged with all the Shadder Valley. 

"So, after takin' drink an' vittle, 
I trotted out to poke an' whittle. 
An' now that flyin' generation 
Of vipers throwed a transformation. 
They quit cahootin' round my gables 
An' settled down like forty Babels, 
A truly awful, howlin', squirmin', 
Rambunkshus flock of pizen vermin. 
Goats, tomcats, panters, anacunders, 
Imps, dragons, spooks an' other wonders. 
Who charged me on a tearin' gallop, 
An' seemed resolved to have my scallop. 

'The leader was a boar-constrictor. 
Who opened six-feet-wide his picter, 
Proposin', if I'm not mistaken. 
To try the whole of Downing's bacon. 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 29 

But never got a single swaller, 
Because I sabred through his collar 
An' left his serpentship in sections 
That skipped in opposite directions. 

*'The next who offered me a banter 
Was twenty foot or so of panter, 
Who carmly ast himself to supper, 
But got a slash from snoot to crupper, 
That ruther cut the combat shorter. 
Both halves a-bawlin' out for quarter. 



XXV 

^'Well, after that the fight was easy ; 
The spooks were old, the dragons wheezy; 
The billy-goats were clumsy hitters 
An' kinder tottlish on their bobbins ; 
The tomcats frowzy, starvelin' critters, 
A poorish match for mice an' robins ; 
From whence I jedge that Satan's legions 
Are nourished purty much on shadders ; 
An' probably the brimstone regions 
Don't run so rich as Shiloh medders. 

"At any rate, the spirit bodies 
Went down as easily as toddies. 
I found it ruther fun than trouble 
To bust their glory like a bubble. 
An' worked destruction on their models 
Till every rood was heaped with noddles. 
All dribblin smoke from mouths an' noses 
Like jackolanterns lit with oakum. 



30 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Some smilin' peaceable as Moses, 

Some snappin' when I went to poke 'em, 

As though, perhaps, some perished hardened 

An' others longin' to be pardoned. 

''In twenty minutes Tophet's embers 
Conceded that the fight was over; 
The biggest part had lost their members. 
The rest had skittered off to cover. 



XXVI 

**But now comes Beelzebub's endeavor 
To make the battle look like dreamin' ; 
The coot is more than Injun-clever 
In every kind of trick an' schemin'. 

''When mornin' sot the little birdies 
A-grindin' on their hurdy-gurdies 
I puttered out with pick an' shovel 
To lay the witches under gravel. 
But everything was changed ; the corpses 
Were neither fish nor flesh nor porpses. 
I couldn't light on wing or gizzard 
Of fiend or spook or ghoul or wizard. 
Instead of hell-fire salamanders 
I found a stack of geese an' ganders; 
An' wust of all, my neighbor Moultrie 
Presented claims for slaughtered poultry. 
Thus Beelzebub, that prince of cheatin', 
Contrived to cover up his beatin'. 
To plunder me of all my laurels 
An' cast a slur upon my morals." 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 3 1 

XXVII 

Thus was it noble Downing fought, 
And saw his triumph turn to naught, 
While Shiloh rang with foolish scorn 
And Satan lifted high his horn. 

Meantime the elfin maiden strolled 
By midnight through the oaken wold, 
And there beneath the moonshine did 
Whatever Samuel's laws forbid. 
Nor walked alone ; beside her stole 
The gracious youth who knew the right, 
And pointed out the Heavenly goal 
To lowly Shiloh's sons of light. 
Nor he alone : the mysteries 
Of wizard darkness lurked anigh ; 
For zephyrs murmured witching glees 
And thickets whispered counsels sly; 
The field-mice squeaked forbidden words, 
The crickets chirruped wicked leers. 
And titters came from tattling birds 
And sneering owlets hooted jeers. 

So, many a time, through Eblis land 
This couple sauntered hand in hand. 
And heard its naughty echoes ring 
As gladsome music, sweeter far 
To them than any caroling 
Of saints beyond the morning star ; 
Nor cared though many a cloven foot 
Behind them tracked their paradise ; 
Nor cared though poison dewed its fruit 
And all its roses budded lies. 



32 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

XXVIII 

One summer eve Apollos sought 
The bedside of a dying boy ; 
Unearthly comfortings he brought, 
And changed the trembling plaint to joy. 
His prayer arose on lyric wings 
That seemed to challenge angel flights ; 
His psalm resounded like the strings 
Of golden harps on Eden's heights ; 
And ere he left the mourning hearth 
To follow paths that seraphs flee, 
A grateful soul had 'scaped from earth 
And pain and sin and such as he. 

XXIX 

He burst away from prayer and praise 
To find delights of fairy glade. 
His cheek was all a-flame ; his gaze 
Shot flashes like a polished blade. 
He flew with eager feet along 
The road from which he warned so well, 
And every word he breathed was song. 
For every word was Yesebel. 

But suddenly a woman's eyes 
Illumed the darkness ; sparkled keen 
Yet mournfully; seraphic skies 
Of love and love's reproof; their sheen 
Was terrible to him, though sweet. 
They pierced the shadows round his soul; 
They checked the madness of his feet. 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 33 

He paled like one who hears the toll 

Of funeral bells, and fears to die. 

He stopped with lifted arms and sobbed, 

^'Oh, Esther!"— "Yes," she wept, " Tis I!" 

Then, standing by his side, she throbbed 

/\.nd struggled through a stormy mere 

Of pleading, every wave a tear. 



XXX 

I know you love another. Yea, 
I know her name. But let it go ! 

My gladness had its little day 
And set forever. Be it so ! 

I was not worthy such a throne 

Of joy as once seemed all my own. 

days when earth was paradise ! 
When seraphim attended me ! 

Alas! I half forgot the skies. 

Forgot my very God in thee. 
He rescued with the sword of flame. 
He punished. Hallowed be his name ! 

1 murmur not. I blame you not. 
I ask you not for happiness. 

I offer not a love forgot. 

Its strength is gone. I could not bless 
Your life as once T hoped to do. 
Henceforth a gulf divides us two. 



34 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

But you, Apollos ! where are you ? 

Am I the only one forsook? 
Look back upon the joy you knew 

In ways of hohness. Then look 
Adown the path you tread to night. 
Are they the same? Is darkness light? 

Where is the eloquence that burned 
Along the road that leads to God ? 

Has he who taught the journey, learned 
No footstep feebler souls have trod? 

The guide, the champion, of our band 

Alone turns back from Eden-land. 

Are not the companies of Heaven, 
The high communion of the just, 

The purity like snow new-driven, 
The wealth beyond all loss or rust. 

Fairer than any hope to dwell 

With lords and princesses of hell ? 

XXXI 

She ceased. Her pleading mantled up 
To sobbing, — woe's primeval speech. 
It overbrimmed the little cup. 
Of human language; strove to reach 
Unearthly eloquence. Meanwhile 
Her lips revealed a yearning smile 
That writhed and quivered like a wretch 
Whose limbs the torture-engines stretch. 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 35 

But presently she grew aware 
That none attended to her moan. 
She sobbed and gasped to empty air; 
The man she pleaded with had flown ; 
Had leaped away like one who speeds 
From punishment of evil deeds. 
He ran like Cain, alone, alone. 
The wicked darkness helped his flight, 
The swarthy-pinioned, demon night. 
It shielded him from pitying eyes 
That strove to follow, longed to save. 
Alone he fled with broken cries 
Like one who fights against a wave 
That smothers him in curling froth. 
His aching heart was bitter wroth 
With every living thing but her 
Whose magic made his pulses stir. 

He neared the wizard wold and heard 
Her voice careering like a bird ; 
(A bird afloat on balanced wings 
Who sings unknowing that he sings) 
So lightly soared her gladsome lay 
Of times when frolic gods held sway ; 
When every hill-top had its grove. 
And every grove its glowing shrine, 
Where Baal accepted corn and wine, 
Or Ashtaroth accepted love. 



36 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

XXXII 

There was a maid of Sidon 
Who joyed to watch the night 

When all its princes ride on 
Their jeweled steeds of light. 

She loved the brightest daemon 
Who flies from pole to pole, 

And wrote his lordly name on 
The altar of her soul. 

To find him and to hold him 
She wandered north and south; 

To clasp him and to fold him 
Against her heart and mouth. 

But far above he sparkled 

And reigned from zone to zone 

And far below she darkled, 
Still loving him alone. 

Oh, weary was the maiden 
When halted she to rest: 

It was the daemon's Aidenn, 
And lovers there are blest. 

For, weeping near a river. 
She looked therein and spied 

Her darling's glory quiver 
Beneath the crystal tide. 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 3/ 

Then down the maiden fluttered, 

And never more was seen ; 
But daemon voices muttered : 
. "Below she reigns a queen." 



XXXIII 

He found her dancing through a glade 
Of moonlit turf and leafy shade, 
While all around and all above 
Disported airy, fairy forms 
As thick as motes when summer warms 
The marshy wold to life and love. 
Around the dancing elfin girl 
They flitted blythely to and fro 
On hazy wings of lucent pearl. 
Now darting swift, now wheeling slow. 
As fitful breezes chanced to blow. 
Or crazy eddies chanced to w^hirl. 

Aloft, the crescent goddess flew 
On slender wings of argent sheen 
As though the joyous Fairy Queen 
Arrived athwart the hollow blue 
To find and greet her devotee. 
Nor came alone, for every zone 
Of sparkling night with daemons shone. 
The gods who ruled the Tyrian sea 
And made their names and glory known 
To gay Hellene and grave Chaldee ; 
While ever, through the northern sphere, 
The boreal spirits toiled to rear 



38 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

A paradise of throbbing flame, 
Incessant tumbling, yet the same. 
So deftly wrought some magian name. 



XXXIV 

He found her dancing like a breeze, 
In raiment delicate as mist 
And shorter than her dimpled knees, 
While lovingly the moonlight kissed 
Her arms from shoulder down to wrist. 

He found her dancing like the seas. 
The bacchant seas, when tempests pour 
Their mighty music far from shore ; 
When every frantic triton blows 
His shell for laughing sprite and gnome, 
And every billow naiad throws 
Abroad her draperies of foam. 
He called her fiercely, ''Yesebel !" 
For still he greatly feared to see 
The lurid entrances of Hell. 
She answered, singing, "Come to me!" 

He looked ; he saw the pearly teeth. 
The coral curl of chanting lips. 
The ebon hair in tossing wreath. 
The levin glance, the bosom's swell, 
The rosy hands athwart the hips, 
The twinkling feet, the maenad glee ; 
And all his puny anger fell, 
A falling star, to quick eclipse. 
No power had he to bid her nay. 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 39 

No power to turn and speed away, 
But dazzled stared with panting breath, 
The feeblest man of feeble clay 
That ever reeled in wavs of death. 



XXXV 

She laughed ; she kissed his golden head. 
The while he trembled like a leaf. 

''There's not a sin on earth," she said, 
"Except the dreary sin of grief ; 

There's not a holier thing than mirth 

In all the holy lands of earth. 

''The laughing gods of olden time, 
The deities of gladsome men. 

Illume us, beckon us to climb 
Afar from dogma's smoky den, 

Where bigots pile the cruel fires 

With nature's pleasures, hopes, desires. 

Look upward ! Night is all divine 
For those who tremble not to die. 

Look upward ! Jocund daemons shine ; 
Olympian revels crowd the sky. 

Look up and see what life should be : 

A godlike dance for me and thee! 

And, ah my queen ! my queen of fays ! 

She lifts her shining arms above 
The cloudy crests, the flying haze 



40 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Of heavenly night, and bids to love, 
The old, the sweet, the strong command. 
So well obeyed in Elfin land. 

Dear goddess queen ! beneath thy glance 
What gentle pleas and soft replies. 

What yearning lyres and tender chants, 
What clinging lips and burning eyes. 

How many millions have there been 

Since thou hast reigned, O goddess-queen ! 



XXXVI 

She stopped ; then swiftly caught his hands 
And folded him in coiling bands, 
An Eden-serpent, deadly sweet 
From winsome head to lissome feet. 
Her snaky glances brightly stole 
Through his, and paralyzed his soul. 
She needed not to murmur word 
Of sortilege or charm ; he heard 
Her witching heartbeats throb and seethe 
In all his frame ; he felt her breathe 
Her sorceries through every vein ; 
He felt her magic in his brain; 
He only gasped to suck perfume ; 
He drank her fragrant, dazing bloom ; 
The draught was death ; he drank his doom. 

She saw him fall ; she saw him lost ; 
She uttered not a word of boast. 
She saw her glamour win its prize. 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 41 

And could not speak, except in sighs. 
But triumph sent the pagan blood 
Athwart her face in burning flood, 
And lit her eyes to flamings, while 
She kissed him with a syren smile, 
Victorious, a queen of guile ! 

A soul was lost, a victim fell 
For aye beneath her evil spell, 
Forever fell to worship sin 
And whomsoever rules therein. 



XXXVII 

Who never gazed with sparkling eye 
On gleam and shape of fairy mead ; 
Who never saw the elfin sky 
One moment glow like Heaven indeed ; 
Who never heard the lorelei sing 
Till all his blood like lava ran ; 
I count him but a lumpish thing, 
Not worth the lordly title, Man. 

The weak behold the mighty fall. 
And, marvel how their feet should slip ; 
The sheltered pinnace tells the yawl 
How^ ocean whelmed the lofty ship ; 
The cripple keeps his blood and breath 
When battle lays the champion pale; 
The ant surveys the lion's death. 
And says, "Behold me strong and hale !' 
The daisies smile superior 
When giant oaks bestrow the plain : 



42 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

They only felt a zephyr stir; 
Aloft it was a hurricane. 

There never yet was groundling mole 
That perished climbing peaks of snow ; 
There never yet was pigmy soul 
That bore Promethean sin and woe. 
No levin rends the fluttering leaf, 
No wreck befalls the grubbing hind, 
No syren music lures the deaf. 
No demon star misleads the blind; 
While he, the chief, the kingly one, 
Whose noble blood is throbbing fire. 
Whose haughty pinions seek the sun. 
Whose aim is ever high and higher; 
How often doth his swiftness drive 
Through dazing gleams or blinding glooms ! 
How often must the lightning rive 
His daring might of splendid plumes ! 

He finds a more than human grace 
Where flesh discovers flesh alone; 
He sees beyond the outer face. 
He sees the soul upon its throne ; 
He clothes another with himself. 
And therefore finds her passing fair. 
He sees the god within the elf; 
He sees the fiends as once they were. 
He bends the knee where others stand. 
Because he has the second sight ; 
He seems the fool of all the land. 
Because he loves with all his might. 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 43 

xxxviir 

The story goes (who now receives 
What ancient men affirmed on oath?) 
That underneath the oaken leaves, 
And shehered by a laurel's blowth,' 
Two lated urchins, cold with fright, 
Beheld the Stygian revellings, 
The wood a hell of lurid light. 
The air a hell of goblin wings ; 
Beheld their pastor madly whirl 
With Yesebel in Belial's dance, 
While all around a wizard swirl 
Revolved with stormy song and prance; 
Till lastly came a fearful shape. 
Beyond the ghastliest thought of man, 
A formless form as black as crape. 
With pinions reaching many a span; 
Whereon these younkers, all agape, 
Displayed what spryness younkers can. 
And trundled off their trembling meat 
To pious Shiloh's drowsy street. 

The village won, they yelled amain 
Till nightcaps blanched each window pane, 
Till lovely woman poured her shriek 
And infants made the echoes speak. 
While strident goodman, plangent squire 
Responded, ''Murder! witches! fire!" 
At last, when every soul was hoarse. 
At last the case was understood, 
And Shiloh mustered all its force 



44 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

To march against the wicked wood, 
Resolved to dye its steel in gore 
Of wizard throngs, and furthermore 
To capture Tophet's sooty peers 
And bind them for a thousand years. 



XXXIX 

Now Downing, in his Thirteenth Book, 
Relates in noble terms the matter. 
'T kinder hoped," he says, ''to cook 
The goose of Satan to a tatter. 
We had a hundred men, about. 
With twenty wagon-loads of ladies, 
Besides a whappin' younker rout 
An' hounds enough to pin all Hades. 
I sent the bacheldors ahead, 
With orders strict to keep a-wabblin', 
Expectin' soon to hear their lead 
A-whizzin' through a yowpin' goblin. 

"But common men, as ginrals know 
Are ruther peaceful kind of cattle. 
An' allays travel pesky slow 
Whenever they go forth to battle. 
Afore we'd journeyed very fur 
Or Nipton's flames begun to blind us, 
I found that every skirmisher 
Was forty rod or more behind us. 
Thereon I formed my army front 
Accordin' to the law of natur : 
The women first, to ketch the brunt ; 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 45 

The chaps who'd want to save 'em, later. 
The better-halves an' gals, yon ken. 
Might nse the shays for battle-chariots ; 
An that would stir the married men, 
An' cheer the bacheldor Iscariots. 

''The line was purty chirk at last, 
Especially the dogs an' bosses. 
An' rattled forrard middlin' fast, 
Considerin' the stumps an' mosses, 
Till finally we nighed the grove 
Where Satan's deacons cut their capers, 
All lookin' monstrous hot above, 
As though the twigs were burnin' tapers. 
I ranked my wagons thill to thill. 
An' give the word to whip tremendous ; 
Then, whack, we cantered up the hill 
As fast as hoofs an' wheels could send us. 

XL 

*'We reached the top. You never saw 
A spot like that for signs an' wonders : 
The turf ablaze like kindled straw, 
The oaks a-spittin' sparks an' thunders, 
The lanskip glarin' all around, 
The air alive with spooks an' devils. 
While crowds of witches sot the ground 
A-teeter with their stompin' revels ; 
All guarded by a dragon's rolls 
Of slimy scales an' tail enormous, 
Who snorted ovens-full of coals. 
An' blew 'em ragin' hot to warm us. 



46 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

"But, most astonishin' to tell, 
I spied our lately wusshupt parson. 
Both arms around our Yesebel, 
A-jiggin' through the fire an' arson; 
Both steppin' out at sech a pace, 
So dandified an' swift an' supple. 
With sech a gladness in the face, 
I couldn't help admire the couple. 
They kinder seemed like king an' queen : 
I never saw a gal no sweeter : 
Her cheeks a-flush, her glances keen: 
All Shiloh couldn't show her beater. 
She flew like any busy bee; 
There warn't another jade went past her ; 
Yit seemed to me the parson he 
Could foot it off a leetle faster. 
He had a sort of unkshus slide : 
You saw him, then you couldn't find him ; 
He squelched the spryest wizard's pride. 
An' left the peartest imps behind him. 



XLI 

"But while I stood with jaws apart, 
A-gogglin' at those hansome critters, 
My army got a trifie scart 
An' suddintly went all to fritters; 
P'or when the bosses smelt the dragon. 
An' when the ladies fairly saw it, 
Away went every tarnal wagon 
As fast as dobbin's legs could draw it; 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 47 

All' clost behind, with howl an' whine, 
Dogs, younkers, single men an' married, 
The fastest, loudest drove of swine 
That ever Tophet's legion harried. 

"The only one who stuck it through 
Was Esther Anne, my faithful daughter. 
God bless her! Downing grit is true. 
An' Downing blood is thicker 'n water. 
She wouldn't dodge* the pesky ventur, 
Though right ahead stood Hell embattled, 
An', jerry-go-lang! for Shiloh centre 
Those wagons of salvation rattled. 
She went beside me through the scrimmage 
Without the smell of fire upon her. 
For Satan's impotent to damage 
A maiden clad in grace an' honor. 

''Well, right away the fight begun, 
The devils spoutin' smoke an' flashes, 
I bangin' with my duckin' gun. 
An' blowin' some to dust an' ashes. 
The forest glimmered red an' black 
With fizzin' fire an' sooty cinders ; 
The noise was loud enough to crack 
In flinders forty thousen' winders. 
In short, t'was jest the roughest tussle, 
The toughest muss for roars an' blazes. 
That ever taxed old Downirig's muscle 
An' scart him into prayers an' praises. 



48 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 



XLII 

''Considerin' their cause was bad, 
The gobhns nobly used their chances, 
An' where the dragon led they had 
A sneakin' hope to make advances. 
That dragon give me special fits : 
He scorched an' baked an' fried an' roasted : 
He smelted both my eppylets 
An' left my uniform well toasted. 
I couldn't dodge the creetur's aim. 
Though peart at dodgin' as an otter; 
An' every time he blazed, the flame 
Appeared to me a trifle hotter. 
At last, as flints were gittin' few 
An' nawthin' seemed to come of shootin', 
I thought I'd try an interview 
Upon a more familiar footin'. 

''The sword of Gideon I drawed. 
An' went for Granther Dragon's jacket. 
The monster smoked an' blazed an' clawed, 
But found he couldn't stand the racket. 
His scales an' buttons flew around; 
His trotters wabbled sorter limber ; 
He winced an' whimpered like a hound ; 
His afterparts were all a-kimber. 
Then suddintly an' awful glare 
Ascended swishin' through the branches ; 
The cuss had scooted for his lair 
With all his devils at his haunches. 
You never saw a garden toad 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 

So lively in a shingle-whackin' ; 

I jest remarked that somethin' glowed. 

An' then his majesty was lackin'. 



XLIII 

*'But I had nary time to laugh 
While any warlock stayed, or wizard ; 
I thrashed my harvest into chaff. 
An' spelt my stent from A to Izzard. 
I strowed the country right an' left 
With Tophet's elders an' exhorters, 
With damaged prophets, powwows cleft, 
An' necromancers carved in quarters. 
The very whiteoaks couldn't hold 
Agin the slash of Downing's whinyard; 
I ravaged all that haunted wold 
As Ahab ravaged Naboth's vineyard. 
I didn't leave a trunk unchopped; 
The rubbidge covered several acres. 
An' everywhere the wizards dropped 
In urgent need of undertakers. 
The hill is higher far than 'twas 
Before I laid the woodland level. 
An' schollards dig there teeth an' claws 
As old an' ugly as the devil. 

"But still, alas! I couldn't do 
A Shiloh soldier's perfect duty; 
I failed to run Apollos through, 
An' save my little gipsy beauty, 
They whipped about at lightnin' pace, 



49 



50 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Onsartin, like a firefly's glitter, 

The parson smirkin' in my face, 

The lassie blushin', all a-titter. 

They sparkled there, they fluttered here, 

They glimpsed along from nook to cover. 

Betim.es they capered purty near, 

An' roundabout my head would hover. 

But finally there came a glare 

Of fiery claws and flamy pinions, 

That hustled them, I s'pose, to where 

Apollyon snarls among his minions." 



XLIV 

Thus Downing saw them, sturdy child 
Of common sense, who found no grace 
In dazzling sin, or soul beguiled. 
In demon plume, or fairy face; 
Who saw the earthly husk of things. 
And saw the earthly husk alone. 
Nor guessed a grub has hidden wings, 
Nor guessed the gem within the stone ; 
Who held the ancient virtues sin. 
The hoary creeds bedeviled tales. 
Nor found a gleam of glory in 
The names that ruled Elysian vales ; 
To whom the pearly sylphs were black. 
The syren's lilt a doleful scream, 
The fairies but a vampire pack, 
And poesy a wicked dream. 



THE WITCH OF SHILOH. 5 1 

Thus Downing saw this fated pair 
Who sought to princes of the wind; 
Who found each other deadly fair, 
And therefore loved, and therefore sinned. 
He saw them smitten ; hurried swift 
As lightning through a fiery rift 
Of Eblis; souls of driven flame 
That agonized from sin to shame ; 
Apostate angels, tempest-tost ; 
Extinguished stars, forever lost. 



XLV 

But Esther saw with other eyes. 
For sorrow knows the second-sight; 
And loving souls, though clad in white, 
Behold with love's alert surmise. 
She saw them soaring hand in hand. 
Their glances mingled, eye to eye. 
Their breath commingled, sigh to sigh, 
Like creatures born of Paphian land. 
Who held each other far too dear 
To question whether Eden's strand 
They neared, or Hell's Cimmerian mere. 

She saw them floating, far above. 
On beaming clouds of delicate lawn, 
Around them many a kissing dove 
And dovelike spirit, winged with love. 
Who guided them to meet the dawn 
As tenderly as angels guide 
Forgiven souls through Heaventide. 



52 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Adown the kindling East they shone; 
And there, a welkin's width away, 
They lingered glorious; seemed to stay 
One breath upon a dazzling throne; 
One moment reigned; then sudden fell 
For aye ; while Esther wept, "Farewell !" 



THE 
LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS 



II 

THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS 
I 
It was a time of bloody strife 
Between the Baldybird and Lion, 
And wO'ful plagues were sorely rife 
In every nook of Freedom's Zion : 
A plague of Britishers and Hessians, 
A plague of tarred and feathered traitors. 
Of powwow dances, witch possessions 
And Mingos fierce as alligators. 

It was the nation-building time 
That freed Americans of fetters. 
And garred them grace in prose or rhyme 
To say they never met their betters; 
When, startling Shiloh's single street, 
Appeared a pale and eager rider. 
His courser reeling through the heat. 
His raiment dusty as a spider 
Who halted near a visage fair 
That blushed behind a window lattice, 
And faltered, "Lady, tell me where 
Abides New England's Cincinnatus." 

II 

She pointed out a modest cot, 
Bedight with shingled porch and gable, 
And, close behind, a garden lot 



56 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

And roomy barn and airy stable. 
A well and woodpile graced a yard 
Where hum of beehives, honey-laden, 
And bustling whirs of spinning jarred 
Through drowsy hymns of a rosy maiden. 

Beyond declined a dimpled run 
Of ploughing land and wood and meadow. 
Where gladsome corn revered the sun 
And thankful kine reposed in shadow : 
A Shiloh farm of knobs and wales 
Without a lonely level acre, 
But choicely rimmed with chestnut rails 
And kept as clean as any Quaker. 

There dwelt our solar prototype 
When duty did not send him shining 
To give the Lion's tail a gripe 
And set the Unicorn a-whining. 
Beside his grindstone Downing stood, 
In shirtsleeves moiling, as he wonted, 
To keen anew his sabre's mood. 
But lately sorely gapped and blunted 
In slicing various Tory knaves 
Who came by night to burn and pillage. 
And drive our fathers ofi' for slaves. 
And make an end of Shiloh village. 



Ill 

The rider halted, hat in hand. 
''My name," he said, ''is Captain Speeder, 
And I arrive with haught command 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 5/ 

P>om Putnam, our illustrious leader. 
He bade me find you, bade me say 
That things are faring worse than sadly 
With those who hold the righteous way, 
While Satan's kingdom prospers madly. 

''Briton nor Hessian hurts us now, 
Nor lurking brave, nor sneaking Tory ; 
For we can front them brow to brow 
And hurl aback their fiercest foray. 
It is a girl, a buxom jade, 
An Indian witch, a powwow's daughter. 
Who makes Columbia's soul afraid 
And lures her mighty ones to slaughter. 
She glides about our camp by night, 
Adroit in magic, strong in beauty. 
And slays the sentinel outright, 
Or wiles him from the beat of duty. 
Yea, none resist her cunning lure; 
The veteran renowned in battle. 
The officer wt counted sure. 
All follow her like silly cattle; 
And those who perish not reveal 
Our plans to whatsoever human ; 
In sort that Freedom seems to reel 
Before the malice of a woman. 

''You know of Ethan Allen ; know 
His faithfulness beyond suspicion ; 
And know how many a stalwart foe 
His arm has pitched to hot perdition. 
He too is gone; he went at dawn 
W^ith manv oaths to slav the maiden ; 



58 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

And that is all we know; he's gone, 
Though scarcely gone, we think to Eden." 



IV 

So far the captain spake. But here 
The hero thundered forth his sorrow. 

*'Go tell the ginral, never fear; 
I'll follow Ethan's trail to-morrow. 
What ! Allen gone, the peartest soul 
That bore aloft our Yankee banners ! 
How oft I've heerd his curses roll 
In battle's front, like glad hosanners ! 
How often laughed to see him roar 
An' caper 'round a giant Briton, 
Then smite him hip an' thigh before 
I guessed the side he meanter hit on ! 
I'll follow him, and save him, too. 
If he abides in airthly regions ; 
If not, I'll make it awful blue 
In hell for Satan's murky legions. 

"But first I ought to find the maid 
Who keeps our Baldybird in trouble. 
An' let her know that Gideon's blade 
Can mow Apollyon's crap to stubble. 
I've ofTen heerd of her afore. 
Unless my memory's in error; 
Her granther was a sagamore, 
King Metacom, New England's terror. 
I think (if she is young an' fair) 
That Downing wouldn't like to hurt her. 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 59 

But ruther feel disposed to spare, 
An' do his peartest to convert her. 
At all events, I'll sciirry west 
At once, to bag her, or to try it. 
But now dismount an' take a rest. 
An' try a Yankee farmer's diet." 

The captain bowed. *T may not stay ; 
My duty is to bear your message." 
He bowed again, and rode away, 
As swift as prairie horse-expressage. 



*'Then Downing" (here we quote his book) 
"Sot down an' made a hearty dinner ; 
For Esther was a faithful cook. 
An' had her mother's cunning in her. 
Besides, I allays find that I 
Can fight my best on stacks of rations ; 
An' that's the strategy whereby 
The British lick their neighbor nations. 
Besides, I crammed my havresack 
With pork an' beans an' codfish salted, 
In order that I mightn't lack 
A Yankee supper when I halted. 

*'Of course I wore my uniform, 
With eppylets an' hat an' feather, 
Because the cloth is extry warm 
An' proof agin the wettest weather. 
My trooper pistils, one inch bore. 
Hefty enough to knock down cattle. 
An' sabre, three foot long or more. 



60 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Made out my armyment for battle. 

So fixed, upon my mare I got, 

An' flung a good-bye kiss to Esther; 

She prayed a leetle on the spot. 

An' I, though not rehgious, blest her. 



VI 

"Then off I started, sou-by-west, 
Through swarmin' borough, town an' village; 
For old Connecticut is blest 
With livelier craps than those of tillage. 
An' everywhere I went or come 
The people gathered by the thousen; 
I tell ye they were nowise dumb 
When Downing cantered past their housen. 
In ginral, though, I'm pleased to say. 
The grown-up men were off to slarter. 
An' those who whooped me on my way 
Were wife an' granny, lad an' darter. 

''A week I traveled, all afire; 
Then duly halted over Sunday, 
Attended meetin', sung in choir, 
An' started out refreshed o' Monday, 
At last I sighted, on a hill, 
The Yankee banners all a-quiver; 
An' found a sentry, squattin' still 
An' watchin' 'crost a shady river, 
I sent him with the mare to camp. 
An' took his beat, an' done his duty; 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 

For day was puttin' out his lamp, 
An' soon I might expect the beauty." 

VII 

No zephyr stirred the mellow calm, 
No footfall strolled amid the night ; 
The air was drenched with humid balm 
Of forest blooms ; a droning flight 
Of insects fretted on the ear. 
As though the ancient Baal of gnats 
And flies were holding revel near. 

Aloft, a fitful rush of bats 
Careered on lean and sticky wings, 
While fireflies hasted through the grass 
Like travelers lost and mad with fear. 
The air was full of songs and stings 
And rustlings ; serpents seemed to pass 
From tuft to tuft of underwood : 
One might believe the wizard brood 
Had taken shapes of beastly things 
And swarmed to meet in hellish mass. 

Below, the river ran like ink, 
A stagnant, silent, stygian stream, 
Funereal-palled from brink to brink 
By giant trees. A single gleam 
Of spectral moonlight wandered through, 
And showed against the oozy brae 
A silver-gleaming birch canoe, 
A boat for scouts to cross the wave 
And gather food, or seek affray 
With Tory thief or Alingo brave. 



62 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

VIII 

Our hero, careful lest a ball 
Might find him from the other shore, 
Descended creeping, reached the yawl 
And laid his length upon its floor. 
Recumbent there, with visage darkened. 
His heavy pistols cocked for strife, ' 
His breath suppressed, he slyly barkened 
And peeped for signs of hostile life. 

Betimes a drowsy drone he heard 
Of plunging waters, far below ; 
Or was it but a thrumming bird 
In dozing terror? Who can know? 
For hours he listened thus ; and then 
Perhaps he slept ; he never told. 
There come awearied moments when 
The sentry nods, though good as gold. 

At last he roused himself — perchance 
From revery — perchance from dream; 
He raised his head and threw a glance 
About him; then across the stream. 
Diana, hunting high in night, 
Sent arrows through the forest ranks 
That feathered half the flood with light 
And filigreed the curving banks ; 
And there, amid the elfin sheen, 
He spied an Indian maiden kneel,'^ 
Who plied a paddle, dimly seen, 

* The birch-bark canoe is paddled kneeling. 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 6^ 

And urged along a spectral keel. 

He rubbed his eyes and looked again; 

He thought to see her fade away ; 

But. soon a glorious argent vein 

Of moonlight showed her clear as day. 



IX 

Then Downing knew that death was near; 
He knew the witch, her errand knew ; 
Yet quickly made his shallop veer 
To meet her wizard-built canoe. 

Ah! perilous she was to greet 
As ocean maid, or forest fay, 
Or lorelei singing deadly-sweet. 
Or Circe smiling sense away. 
Her cheek was brown, but fervid bloom 
Of roses flushed its dimpled grace; 
Her hair was black as raven's plume, 
And veiled with magic half her face. 
Her form was slender, round and tall, 
And shapely were the arms that twined 
From side to side, and drove her yawl 
To meet the foeman of her kind. 

She smiled upon him. Oh, that smile ! 
What viper hath such deadly guile ! 
It seemed the joyous friendliness 
Of childhood, innocent of ill ; 
It had a lovelorn tenderness. 
And yet its longing was to kill. 



64 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 



They met and passed ; in vain he sought 
To clutch her while she skimmed anear; 
She whirled her paddle quick as thought, 
And sent her feathery pinnace clear, 
Then turned the prow adown the flow 
And paddled gently, flinging back 
Such smiles as love alone should throw. 
To lure him down her fatal track. 

He followed where her witchery led, 
He went like one with frenzied head. 
He seemed a man as good as dead : 
His only longing was to seize, 
To clutch and carry her away, 
No' matter where, no matter why ; 
And so he bent him on his knees. 
And made his paddle madly play. 
And flew like one who longs to die. 

Now came a throbbing, reeling strife 
For mastery in speed; the blades 
Incessant leaped to swifter life; 
And through the river's lights and shades. 
Forever quickening, hissed the skiffs. 
The rippling pools and bays retired ; — 
The lofty landmarks — hills and cliffs; 
And still the panting rowers fired 
Their madding hearts to fiercer race ; 
While aye the maiden backward cast 
The elfin glamor of her face. 
And seemed to beckon, "Follow fast !" 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 65 

XI 

For miles the nimble paddles flew, 
Implacable and strong and true 
As eagle wings athwart the blue; 
For miles they traversed gloom and sheen 
With scarce a fathom-length between 
The Yankee chief and forest-queen. 

Yet aye a distant, surly drone, 
(The growl of some torrential leap 
Adown a cyclopean steep) 
Approached and rolled in grimmer tone. 
At last it poured a lion roar; 
It seemed to clamor, ''Turn or die !" 
But still the maiden plied her oar, 
And still the chaser followed nigh. 
He felt the current's quick'ning swirl, 
He knew how near he was to drown; 
But yet he hoped to clutch the girl 
Before destruction sucked him down. 

Eftsoon he spied, not far away 
Beneath the gleam of Ashtaroth, 
A lofty, glorious ghost of spray, 
Spanning the rivers tossing froth ; 
And underneath its mighty plumes — 
Distinct against the further glooms — 
A burnished edge of fleeting steel, 
The cataract's awful downward wheel. 



66 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

XII 

He paused a breath. The lorelei flung 
A gesture back. Again he wrought, 
And tow'rd the watery Ebbs sprung 
Without another doubting thought. 
Then came the rush. He glanced before. 
The maiden stood with folded arms, 
Upright amid the seethe and roar, 
And turned upon him all her charms. 
Her eyes like costly jewels shone. 
And dazed his vision even then; 
Her face was Circe's very own, 
A face to dazzle dying men. 
But weirdly was it changed in style ; 
It looked the visage of a Fate. 
She smiled, but now it was a smile 
Of cruel triumph, burning hate. 

He saw her thus, but all too late. 
For then he saw her swiftly sink, 
And he alone was on the brink. 
He followed down the mad descent 
With but a single hasty prayer — 
A gasp for mercy; down he went 
A hundred feet through mist and air ; 
And downward still ; the boiling billow 
Received him, clutched him, hurled him swift 
Along the rapid's bubbly drift. 
As helpless as a wisp of willow. 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 6/ 

XIII 

He drove, he never knew how long, 
The sport of water-sprites and gholes. 
Gay bells he heard, delicious song. 
And tinkling zithers all aquiver. 
The sounds that ravish •drowning souls, 
The lorelei strains of Charon's river. 

He thought of death and hell and heaven ; 
Betimes he thought his soul had crossed 
The bounds of death to float unshriven, 
Unseen of God, forgotten, lost; 
And then he hurtled, fiercely driven 
Through sundered whirlpools, surges riven, 
Aloft to gladsome regions where 
Careered the breeze and beamed the moon. 
He swam by instmct, scarce aware 
That he was living yet; but soon 
The life returned to brain and breath ; 
He longed to live ; he flouted death. 

He saw himself anear the shore. 
Though down the river still he flew; 
His fingers gripped a broken oar. 
And near him tossed a wrecked canoe. 
The speeding flood was white and rude 
With frothy whirl and bubbly curl ; 
The flood was all a solitude, 
And vanished was the wizard girl. 



68 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

XIV 

So ended Downing's first endeavor 
To catch the Wampanoag maid; 
He fared as mortals fare forever 
In chasing lorelei, nymph and naiad ; 
He found the business -wondrous dripping, 
And much in need of first-rate shipping. 
But even while he splashed for shore 
He heard the clarion call of duty; 
He raised his dexter fist and swore 
To still pursue the heathen beauty; 
Pursue and find her, though she stole 
For hiding-place to stygian regions ; 
Convert her yet and save her soul 
From Pandemonium's cunning legions. 
So ever west, with patient labor, 
His pistols slung about his waist, 
And dragging twenty pounds of sabre, 
Through boundless leafy lands he paced ; 
Because he thought an Indian maiden 
And specially an eldritch thing, 
Would fly to countries forest-laden 
Where solitude as yet was king. 

At last he reached a lordly current, 
The Genesee of modern day. 
Which flung a swift and massive torrent 
Adown a ravine veiled in spray. 
He halted there for food and slumber, 
A mile or more above the roar, 
And made a fragile float of lumber. 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 69 

And fitted it with mast and oar ; 
Because, he judged, the wizard lady, 
Would hope to ambuscade him there, 
And come when all was still and shady 
To spread a net and find a snare. 

XV 

He watched ; she came ; he saw her glimmer 
Athwart the mellow dusk of night. 
He saw her birchen paddle shimmer. 
And dash the foam to left and right. 
Through veiling leaves he knew the splendor 
That brimmed her eyes and flushed her face. 
The rounded figure, tall and slender. 
The sway and gest of savage grace. 

He launched his float ; he never waited 
To let her pass and choose her way; 
He felt that every breath was fated, 
And he must leap to win his prey. 
He gained the middle stream before her, 
And paused above the waterfall ; 
Then drew his pistol, aimed it o'er her, 
And bade her halt or meet his ball. 
And yet he purposed nothing evil, 
His heart was kinder than his guise ; 
He only meant to cheat the devil, 
He only meant to civilize. 

XVI 

The maiden stopped and gazed about her. 
As undecided how to act. 



JO THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

How could she give her foe to slaughter 

Unless she reached the cataract? 

But soon a guileful thought befriended — 

A shift of Indian stratagem; 

Her ready paddle she extended, 

And up the river turned her stem. 

No doubt she hoped to see him wrestle 

In vain against the torrent's sweep, 

And founder like an iron pestle, 

Or take alone the awful leap. 

Away she flitted up the crystal 

Descent of ripples, glinting by ; 

In vain our hero leveled pistol 

And sent a warning bullet nigh. 

He saw her 'scape ; in vain he followed. 
Or strove to follow, where she hied; 
His clumsy float of timbers wallowed 
And slowly slipped adown the tide. 
Afar he saw the witch skedaddle 
Through shade and moonlight intertwined, 
And cursed the deftness of her paddle, 
And cursed the cunning of her kind. 
All night he fought with demon billows. 
And only when the morn arose, 
He reached a verdant bank of willows. 
And dumbly dropped, and found repose. 

An hour he slumbered ; so he reckoned ; 
And then, ashamed of sluggard rest, 
Arose to speed where duty beckoned 
Athwart the everlasting West. 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPAXOAGS. J \ 



XVII 



Ere many days he heard a roar 
As though an angel stood before, 
An angel of the judgment-day, 
Who made his awful trumpet bray. 
Commanding time to be no more. 

It was Niagara, the strong, 
The indescribable, the grand. 
Fulfilling all surrounding land 
With its amazing thunder-song, 
And lifting such a lofty pyre 
Of mists as though the seraph hosts 
And multitude of sainted ghosts 
Had truly gathered there in choir ; 
While over all — above the flow 
Of emerald oceans leaping swift — 
Above the spectral folds and drift — 
Abode the sevenfold-tinted bow. 

No marvel he whose wond'ring eyes 
Beheld this otherworldly scene, 
Discovered nothing there terrene, 
But solely thought of Paradise, 
Of seraphim with blinding wings, 
Of pearly gates and precious stones 
Too bright for earthly diadem; 
Yea, thought of all immortal things 
That dazzle souls of pardoned ones 
In God's supreme Jerusalem. 



72 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

XVIII 

And, gazing thus, the fancy came 
That here, where God appeared to sit, 
And earth resounded to His name. 
No evil sprite would dare to flit ; 
And one might find a shady knoll 
Of rest for travel-wearied soul, 
And there, recumbent, watch the leap 
Of waters down the giant steep; 
Or slumber tranquilly as man 
Reposed when Tellus first began, 
Ere Satan crossed the slough of Chaos 
And brought his grisly son to slay us. 

But this was error; had he dozed. 
His haught career had doubtless closed 
For while he sought a sightly mound. 
His hunter ear discerned a sound 
Far different from plunging water — 
A clamor eloquent of slaughter. 
He heard a noise of singing men. 
And peering down a sunny glen. 
Enclosed by rustling curves of thicket. 
He spied a score of painted braves, 
A bloody gang of Mingo knaves. 
Jigging as hard as they could kick it. 

XIX 

Our hero needed but a glance 
To recognize the scalping dance. 
For right amid the stamping throng 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 73 

Of savage revelers, there hung- 
A dozen scalps of Saxon hair 
Bestained with deadly clots of red, 
And one with tresses flaxen-fair, 
A trophy torn from woman's head. 

The sight was pitiful ; he thought 
Of happy hamlets whelmed in flame. 
Of gladsome hearts to anguish brought, 
Of cord and torture, death and shame : 
Yea, thought of all the griefs and ghosts 
That filled those yelping mouths with boasts. 
One thought of sorrow ; then another 
Of wrath ; he swore to stop the breath 
Of every red-skin man and brother 
Who vaunted forth that song of death. 

But he was one, and they were twenty ; 
How could he strive at even betting? 
His pistol-balls were far from plenty. 
His sabre dull with rust of wetting. 
He saw that only Yankee cunning 
Could beat the herd of Bashan cattle. 
And strategy must set them running 
Before he ventured closer battle. 
So, while the mighty river thundered. 
And bragging Mingos yelled like lawyers. 
Our hero called to mind a hundred 
Bushfighting tricks of Indian warriors. 

XX 

''At last" (thus read his Commentaries) 
"I, Downing, rose upon my trotters, 



74 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

An' shoved aside the leaves an' berries, 
An' hollered louder than the waters. 
They kinder harked, an' stopt their dancin, 
An' sorter made a start to foller ; 
But while they puzzled I was prancin' 
To git another hole to holler. 
I found it, an' agin I hooted. 
This time, I reckon, rather louder; 
Then squatted clost an' softly scooted 
Along the brushwood quicker'n powder. 
An' so from pint to pint I bellered 
Enough to shake Apollyon's courage, 
An' every time I done it, mellered 
Their sposhy hearts to softer porridge. 
I watched 'em, saw they wasn't steady. 
But flocked in shaky squads together. 
An' j edged that they were gittin' ready 
To sport the whitest kind of feather. 
''At last I showed my regimentals : 
You oughter seen the creeturs travel ! 
They s'posed a thousen continentals 
Had come to lay 'em under gravel. 
Away they scooted, all a-straddle 
To git aboard their flimsy birches, 
An', launchin' spry, begun to paddle 
Acrost the rapid's frothy curchies. 
They scuffled smarts but man's resistance 
Was naught amidst the river's revels ; 
I heern their deathsong in the distance. 
An' seen 'em die like Mingo devils. 
Then, bein' hungry as a sharky, 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 75 

I made a dinner off their vittle, 
And also grabbed a birchen barky 
The coots had finished off to whittle." 



XXI 

If one should reach the gate of glory, 
And see beside it falchions bare 

And corpses lying pale and gory, 
No doubt he would be all a-stare. 

No doubt his joyous heart would sadden, 
And he would look around him well 

P'or earthly arms wherewith to madden 
Against assailants fresh from Hell. 

XXII 

So wondering Downing changed in mood 
Beside Niagara's heavenly doors, — 
His battle ended with the brood 
Of INIingos hot from guiles and gores. 
If fiendish men defiled such place 
With vaunting over fiendish sin, 
He might expect the lorelei's face 
And all the peril hid therein. 
And so, when moonlit evening came, 
He stretched himself beside the brink 
Of waves bedight with argent flame, 
And watched without a nod or wink. 



"](> THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

XXIII 

She came ; athwart the trembhng shade 
That fringed a thicket-mantled isle, 
?Ie saw a boat ; he saw the maid 
Advance resplendent, sweet with guile. 
He loitered not, he launched his bark 
And drove it o'er the eddying mere, 
Although he held belief that stark 
And bony Death would seize him here. 
But here he faltered not to die, 
If only she might die with him ; 
And how could even lorelei fly 
Destruction near that awful brim? 

At- first she paddled nigh to shore, 
But quickly changed to reckless flight. 
For Downing deftly used his oar 
And toiled with superhuman might. 
Erelong, far out upon the flow 
Of ebon waves and snowy froth, 
They tossed and fluttered to and fro — 
A moth beside another moth. 
And then the condor-current caught 
And mastered them in demon claws ; 
And all was over — every thought 
Of winning life, or even pause. 



XXIV 



No chance for human strength or ski] 
The river wrought its single will; 
It hurtled them as Winter flings 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 7/ 

A leaf upon cyclonic wings ; 

Each second drove them swifter on, 

And showed them death more nearly won ; 

Until, anon, they saw or guessed 

The cataract's gleaming, hasting crest. 

The hunter cast a glance before, 
And calmly dropped his useless oar. 
He gripped the thwarts and forward leaned 
With settled brow and glances keened ; 
Nor did he gaze adown the surge, 
But on the forest demiurge ; 
For much he feared lest even here 
Some wizard chance might waft her clear ; 
And he was resolute as death 
To clutch her, though with drowning breath. 

But, fixedly as he might glare, 
The maiden answered back his stare 
As fixedly, and all the while 
Allured him with a syren smile. 
As though she keenly longed to win 
His soul to deadly realms of sin. 
And thus, without a pause or let. 
With eyes upon each other set. 
Amid the rapid's foam and hiss. 
They sought the cataract's abyss. 



XXV 

As roars of lions welcomed those 
Who died m coliseums old ; 
As earthquakes shout above the woes 



78 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

They crush within their fiery hold ; 
So thundered forth that rushing deep 
To those who shared its awful leap. 

A fierce, incessant, deafening roll, 
Unmatched solemnity of sound, 
It shook the air, the solid ground. 
It stunned the senses^ numbed the soul. 
It charmed in slaying, like the cry 
Of ambushed tigers charming one 
Who spies the monsters creeping nigh 
And hears them snarl, yet cannot run. 
Meanwhile the giant slayer had 
No hate nor triumph in its tone ; 
No purpose, whether fierce or glad, 
But mastered them as things unknown. 
It saw them not, it felt them not ; 
They were as creatures unbegot. 
They were a little froth — no more; 
A breath amid that rush and Toar. 
They passed : no human word can tell 
How suddenly the}^ came and went: 
One moment speeding tow'rd the hell 
Of surges: then afar, or spent. 

They flitted like a random thought ; 
Like ghosts they vanisht into naught; 
For, long before they reached the base 
Of that descending ocean, they 
Were folded white from foot to face 
In vasty winding-sheets of spray. 
Yea, there the hunter lost his prey,* 
And drove alone, unknowing where, 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. /Q 

Through fearful caves of maddened waves 
That whirled and hurtled even there, 
Like tigers struggling into graves 
And battling over corpses bare. 



XXVI 

The man who wanders far with death 
And peers within the ghostly gate 
Hath many wondrous facts to state 
If ever God restores his breath ; 
And who can marvel that the wight 
Who plunged beneath Niagara's glooms, 
Believed his spirit winged its flight 
Afar within the realm of tombs? 

Like favored souls of Grecian days 
When Gods delivered pythian lays. 
While yet the spirit-world was near, 
And man was there and then was here. 
Our hero passed the Stygian bounds 
And saw the Happy Hunting Grounds; 
Yea, many a 'famed and queenly squaw. 
And many a valiant sachem, saw 
\Mio drew the shaft against the ball 
In vain, but fell as freemen fall. 

There, crowned with plumes of eagle-wing, 
Supreme amidst a glorious ring 
Of braves, appeared the dreadful chief 
Who bowed New England's head in grief. 
And whirled her villages in flame, 
And wrote in blood King Philip's name ; 



80 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Unfading wrote it on the roll 
Of those heroic sons of dole 
Who strike for hearth and native land 
With heavy heart but heavier hand, 
And perish striking, yet live on 
As though they fell at Marathon. 
. The sachem cast an angry stare 
Upon the stranger's pallid face. 
As all amazed that even there 
Should come a man of English race; 
Then sternly bent his mighty bow 
And drew an arrow to the head 
So swiftly that the shaft was red 
Before the victim guessed the blow. 
The paleface felt a madding pain ; 
He raised a feeble arm to strive; 
He hoped he might be still alive, 
Yet knew the weapon in his brain; 
And then he felt his body hurled 
By hands of superhuman might 
• Through surging atmospheres of night 
Beyond the red-man's spirit-world. 

No marvel Downing wrote with pen 
In later days, that underneath 
Niagara's tremendous seethe, 
Endures the heaven of Indian men; 
And there the awful sagamore 
Awaits in arms a promised day 
When he may hasten forth to slay. 
And win his forest realm once more. 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 8 1 

XXVH 

He rose to life through raging seas; 
He saw the sky, he caught the breeze ; 
He found himself without a wound, 
Though gasping near to being drowned. 
He headed tow'rd the southern coast, 
And swam as never swam a ghost. 
In vain the rapids barred and banned ; 
He tore his foaming way to land. 
A minute's panting rest, and then 
He stared about the rocky glen. 
And down the river's bubbly glare 
For her whose witchcraft brought him there. 

Anon he saw her, living still 
And far beyond his power to kill. 
From dizzy cliffs above his head 
She leaned to spy if he were dead. 
And when he sought to win her shelf 
She fled as flies a frighted elf. 
He clutched for pistols all in vain ; 
The torrent bore them tow'rd the main. 
Then, climbing swift, he won the dell 
Where lately rang the Mingo yell. 
And searched the thickets far and near 
For tomahawk, or bow, or spear. 

Some angel helped ; he quickly found 
A walnut bow of many a pound, 
And twenty arrows pictured o'er 
With quaint device of powwow lore ; 
And, being skilled in Indian charms 



82 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

He knew that these were fated arms 
Assured to slay each savage thing, 
However swift of foot or wing; 
Yea, also weird enough to smite 
Whatever wizard haunts the night. 

Thus armed, he shouted, ''Shoulder hoo !" 
And hasted westward, full of glee, 
To strive with beast and bugaboo 
And salvage grim and desert dree; 
Yet never backward turn his shoe, 
Nor ever fail in heart or knee; 
But tramp Columbia through and through 
From sunrise unto sunset sea; 
And do the deeds of derring-do 
That he could do, and only he. 



XXVIII 

The man who madly loves a maid. 
And prays, ''O sweet ! become my bride !' 
But finds his loving ill repaid, 
And sees his worship flung aside; 
Who learns that she will lure him on 
Through sorrow, peril, loss and strife 
Till hope is dead and life is done. 
Nor ever yet become his wife; 
How bitterly be yields to fate ! 
How vengefully he turns to hate ! 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 83 

XXIX 

So changed desire our errant knight 
Who lately strove with fervid might 
To find the beauteous child of wrath 
And shoo her out of Satan's path, 
Yet gathered naught for all his pains 
But travel-stains and weary reins 
'Mid fastings, vigils, marches, squalls 
And summersets down waterfalls ; 
In short, who lavished love and faith 
To save a savage (or a wraith). 
Yet saw his kindness paid with evil 
Enough to tire the very devil. 

His fervor cooled ; he loathed the thought 
Of meeting yet again her face ; 
He marveled how he ever sought 
To do her any deed of grace. 
The memory of her jeweled glance 
No longer set his heart astir; 
It seemed as though the sight of her 
Would make him curse and turn askance. 
He even loathed the mighty West, 
And loathed the very setting sun. 
But might not leave his task undone 
Without a smirch upon his crest. 
No marvel Downing changed in mind, 
For far ahead the maiden flew. 
And when he saw her face anew 
The continent was half behind. 



84 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

XXX 

Yea, many setting suns he kenned, 
And not a few of waning moons, 
Primeval shades withouten end, 
Or rivers, marshes, lakes, lagoons. 
Before he spied that lass agen 
Whose guileful beauty murdered men. 
Yet oft beneath the pearl of dawn, 
And oft in sunset's glowing rim, 
(Distinct, although so far withdrawn) 
He saw her gracious figure swim. 
As valiant natures always spy 
Their prey ahead, if not anigh. 

Thus brightly dazzled on, he spanned 
The Mississippi's turbid throng 
Of waves to wastes of flowery land ; 
Nor halted yet, but fared along 
To where the tides of buffalo 
Hid earth beneath their ebb and flow. 
The panther scented at his track, 
And cantered off in stealthy flight ; 
The prairie-wolves' lugubrious pack 
Beset his lonely bed till light; 
A drove of horses stared aloof 
And pranced anear on stormy hoof. 

XXXI 

He made a noose ; he climbed a tree 
And waited for a chance to cast; 
Anon he softly laughed to see 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 85 

The desert coursers grazing past; 
The lariat fell witli easy slide, 
And Downing had a horse to ride. 
He mounted while the savage rose, 
And flew as though on eagle's wing. 
No need of chirruping or blows ; 
No need of aught but strength to cling. 
If ever wight rode madder course, 
'Twas fated knight on demon horse. 

In after years our hero wrote 
(And printed, too, in text and note) 
That this extremely welcome steed 
Was not a jade of earthly breed, 
But sent from Paradise or Hell 
To work him either weal or wail. 
Though which no theologue could tell, 
Nor chief of Harvard or of Yale. 
But this, perforce, we now believe: 
No common charger might achieve 
That arrowy rush, without a rest. 
Across the broad, primeval West; 
And certainly the headlong beast 
Was frightfully bewitched, at least. 



XXXII 

On Downing went ; the desert flung 
Its doors agape to let him in; 
And curious desert creatures hung 
Upon his track with various din. 
Grey wolves pursued him, lolling fire 



86 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

And dropping foam of fierce desire 
For hours and hours along his trail ; 
But found their iron muscles fail 
And ceased to howl each other on, 
And vanished rearward one by one. 

Simooms of horses rushed to meet 
His coming, joined him, kept beside 
With straining neck and glinting feet 
And fiery eyes and foamy hide ; 
And so would run the livelong day, 
Till, wearied by his courser's stride. 
They fell behind with wistful neigh 
And stared afar to see him ride. 

Uncounted bison thronged his flight 
And westward flowed like tiding night. 
They darkened leagues of treeless land, 
And billowed close on either hand 
With lurching hump and drooping head 
And frothing mouth and glances red ; 
Yet sought no more to fight than flee, 
And only surged beside his knee, 
A dumb, uncouth, unreasoning throng 
Which knew not why it toiled along. 
For hours he drove through plunging ranks 
Whose foam besprent his stallion's flanks ; 
For hours he scarcely saw the ground, 
So thickly was he compassed round ; 
For dusty miles on dusty miles 
He rode from jostling files to files; 
Yet surely won his way before, 
And found himself alone once more. 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 8/ 

XXXIII 

Grim horsemen, mounted like to him 
On sinewy coursers wild as deer, 
Arrived from desert edges dim. 
With bow and* quiver, shield and spear. 
Their deerskins tossing on the air. 
Their eyes aflame through ebon hair. 
But when they spied the paleface nigh, 
They whirled away with fearful cry 
And rode athw^art the rimless plain. 
Low-bowed above the streaming mane, 
As rideth one who flies a sprite. 
Or fiend, or other parlous sight. 

Again, for days he saw no face. 
The land was manless where he came^ 
As though he drove the human race 
Before him like a prairie flame. 
The only man alive he seemed. 
The last upon a sentenced earth ; 
For him alone the sunrise beamed, 
For him the rainbow had its birth. 
Yet, whether palled in solitude, 
Or compassed round by salvage brood, 
He rode with eager heart and gay, 
Because afar he saw his prey 
And closed upon her day by day. 



88 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

XXXIV 

The witches float on airy pinions 
From setting sun to morning glow, 

And find delight in weird dominions 
Where saintly maid may never go. 

For them the rugged way is level, 
For them the darkling hour is bright ; 

They soar from revel on to revel, 

From waltz to song the livelong night. 

I trow the angels and the pardoned 
Are often envious in their gaze 

Because they see the spirits hardened 
Float smiling down forbidden ways. 

Ah, few divine the dreary labor. 
The keen regret, the grim despair. 

Of those who dance to pipe and tabor 
With splendid princes of the air. 

They only know their matchless sadness. 
Their blighted hopes, their wasted years ; 

They know they are not sprites of gladness, 
But prisoners of fears and tears. 

XXXV 

And such was she, the witch who hurried 
Our knight across the desert plain ; 
Her cheek was wan, her glance a-worried, 
Her body faint, her soul in pain. 
She fled on drooping plumes of sorrow, 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 

On wings of fright she journeyed west, 
And often prayed to see no morrow, 
If death might bring her any rest. 
To God — the god of chiefs and sages — 
The Mighty Soul of painted braves — 
Who ruled our land in olden ages, 
Before the paleface crossed the waves — 
To him, the Sire of Earth and Water, 
The Sagamore of Winds and Skies, 
She pleaded, ''Father, help thy daughter ! 
Thy weary daughter, ere she dies !" 

But gods of faint and fading races 
Are gods deposed, and gods no more. 
No more they throne in lofty places. 
No longer wield the bolts of yore. 
No more they levin through the mountain. 
No longer storm along the deep ; 
Their light has died on brook and fountain. 
Their oracles have sunk to sleep. 
They are but fiends and spirits fallen, 
But brownies, loreleis, elves and fays ; 
They cannot help the souls who call on 
Their names, or help in feeble ways. 

So chanced it now with her who needed 
Such aid as nothing might withstand; 
The deity to whom she pleaded 
Had lost the thunder from his hand. 
The Master of the Indian Aidenn, 
Bereft of half his ancient might, 
Could do no more to save his maiden 
Than send a beast to shield her flight. 



90 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

XXXVI 

At last our rider reached the border 
Of stony steeps that fenced the plains, 
And plunged amid a grim disorder 
Of arid gorges delved by rains ; 
When suddenly he spied before him 
A living hill of shaggy hair, 
Equipped with mighty tusks to gore him 
And trunk to fling him into air. 

This was the pest of early races, 
The Giant Bull of Indian creed, 
The mastodon of college cases. 
The finis of his precious breed. 
No words can tell how vast a creature 
He was in height and length and girth. 
How terrible in mien and feature, 
And how his trampling shook the earth. 
His orbits, broad as coffee- saucers, 
Shot flames from under grisly locks ; 
His codex, thick as frigate-hawsers, 
Uprooted oaks and splintered rocks. 

No doubt the boundless brute had frighted 
Most heroes into fits of fear; 
And Downing's self was scarce delighted 
To see a mastodon so near. 
In haste he waved his hat and helloed 
To make the monster clear the path ; 
The monster stood his ground, and bellowed 
As loud as Etna in its wrath. 
The courser disappeared in terror 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 

So quick and slick that Downing thought 

That he perchance had been in error 

In hokhng that a horse he brought. 

But there was httle time for wonder 

Because his pony flew — or ran ; 

The mammoth roared again Hke thunder, 

And charged as only mammoths can. 



XXXVII 

"The monster give me lots of trouble," 
Says Downing in his pictured page; 
''He allays charged upon the double, 
In spite of his unusyal age. 
I had to skip like forty crickets 
To dodge his vicious pokes an' hits ; 
For, as to skulkin' 'mongst the thickets. 
He'd ripped a wilderness to bits. 

"He charged an' charged an' kep' a-chargin' 
As full of friskiness as spunk, 
An' oust there warn't a finger's margin 
Betwixt my bacon an' his trunk. 

'T used the powwow's bow an' arrer, 
Bewitched to kill at every lick ; 
An' every time he passed, I'd harrer 
His highness with a whizzin' stick. 
But, all the same, the pesky creetur 
Would face about an' buck agin. 
Nor didn't show in limb or feetur 
The slightest sign of givin' in. 
I had an awful lengthy battle 



92 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Afore I fetched a drop of blood, 
An' want no more to do with cattle 
Who orter drowned in Noah's flood. 

"At last I sorter recollected, 
While restin' on my twentieth pull, 
How finely mammoths are purtected 
By that tremenjoiis clip of wool. 
So when the obstinate old bison 
Discharged another cannon-roar, 
I sent a yard of powwow-pizen 
Full-chisel down his yawnin' bore. 
The venom took like scarlet fever; 
He stopped his rush an' stood aghast, 
An' presently begun to weever 
An' tremble like a fallin' mast. 
His awful sasser-eyes were glassy, 
His tongue was furred, his trotters sagged ; 
Then down he slammed ! good lordamassy ! 
The biggest game I ever bagged !" 



XXXVIII 

Yes, there he lay, defunct and gory, 
A mastodon, an adult male ; 
And whoso doubts the wonder-story 
May see the skeleton at Yale. 
Right welcome was the brawny sinner 
To Downing, hungrier than a stork ; 
He sliced a tenderloin for dinner. 
And used his sword for knife and fork 
The only knight of all the ages 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 93 

Since Eros sang to fife and tabor, 

Or Clio told of Ares' rages, 

Who carved a mammoth with his sabre. 

His hunger gone, he dozed a bit, 
And then resumed his westward track. 
Regretting much his wizard hack. 
Although the brute was hard to sit ; 
For still, through morning's veil of grey. 
Or sunset's glowing fleece of red. 
He often saw the Indian fay 
Flit weary on, not far ahead. 
And, had his steed not taken leave. 
He might have bagged her any eve. 



XXXIX 

At last he reached an elfin land, 
A land where magic reigned supreme, 
Fulfilled with shapes on every hand 
More nondescript than shapes of dream ; 
For here (as Downing often told) 
Titanic powwows, famed of old 
Before Manitto lost his throne. 
Had wrought their sorceries in stone. 

Aloft, around, enchantments frowned, 
Tall obelisk, colossal mound, 
Rotunda, facade, temple-wall. 
Keep, citadel, palatial hall. 
Or endless burghs of spire and dome. 
All sentinelled with imp and gnome. 
Who scowled in flintv wrath or woe 



94 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

To see the paleface tramp below. 

Again, the desert glittered bright 
With many colors, mingled stains, 
Red, orange, purple, green and white, 
Blue, sable, lilac, longdrawn veins, 
That painted countless winding fells, 
And beetling cliffs and herbless plains, 
Or filled with witchcraft shadowy dells; 
While here and there a magic wood 
Of fallen stony trunks bestrewed 
The vales with crimson jasper stems, 
Or agate fit for diadems. 
Or opal-tinted chalcedon : 
The wizard-wolds of ages gone, 
The wreck of primal hill and dale. 
Swept down the wonder-stream of time 
From hoary days of Saturn's prime 
When monsters tracked the tender shale 
And dragons soared above the slime. 



XL 

It seemed a mirage built of air. 
Or boreal tints, or bubbles, wrought 
To glow a moment false and fair. 
Then vanish sparkling into naught. 
It seemed no mortal land; it glared 
Too prodigal in hue for earth ; 
It seemed a land that fiends had dared 
To make in malice or in mirth; 
A land of goblin shapes and tints, 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 95 

Devised by seraphim perverse, 
Full many wicked ages since, 
To mock the Maker's universe. 

Perchance the maiden hoped that here, 
Where magic made its dwelling-place, 
Her tracking foe might tread in fear, 
Relax his pace, forsake his chase ; 
Or quit the cumbered way and roam, 
Forever circling, till he died. 
Like one who seeks without a guide 
To thread a Roman catacomb. 

But on he tramped with fearless stride 
From elfin tower to demon hall, 
Along the base of wizard wall. 
Through Stygian forest stricken prone. 
Through pandemoniums of stone. 
Forever forward, ever west ; 
A dogging phantom, scorning rest. 
Who never lost his quarry's track. 
Nor left a footprint pointing back ; 
A cruel spectre fell as hate. 
Preluding vast pursuing broods, 
The first of deadly multitudes. 
Precursor, herald, omen, fate! 



XLI 

So faring on from sight to sight. 
He stumbled soon on ventures new, 
Wliich none would dare receive for true. 
Except that Downing's self did write 



96 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

The prodigies with trusty pen, 
And tell them oft to thankful men. 

The Painted Land was lately past, 
And Downing strode a windy flat 
Of gravel, when he heard a pat 
Of footfalls coming like a blast ; 
And, glaring back, he saw a herd 
Of pigmy steeds pursuing fast 
With steaming mouth and flying mane. 
Although no human rider spurred. 
Nor had they ever known the rein. 
They skirred like cats ; they skimmed the ground 
And none was taller than a hound. 
They sped like wind ; they overran 
And circled round that lonely man, 
Menacing, scarce a rod aloof, 
The weirdest nags since Noah's flood; 
For every one had cloven hoof. 
The signature of fiendish blood. 

No man divineth whence they came: 
Perhaps from Eblis-caves of flame: 
Perhaps from wildernesses known 
To imps and sorcerers alone ; 
But certainly they thronged to aid 
The hunted Wampanoag maid. 



XLTI 

Our hero had a lovely fight, 
The strangest known to mortal wight, 
A scrap with ponies devil-born, 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 9/ 

Who threshed him hke a sheaf of corn. 
The air was full of talon-feet, 
All banging Downing's sacred meat. 
In vain he charged the elfin foes; 
His valor won but harder blows. 
In vain he sabred, vainly shot; 
The ponies paid him hot-and-hot. 
His carcass bore the dints and nicks 
Of something like two hundred kicks. 
No other champion known to fame 
Such drumming ever got, or shame, 
As Downing in his famous row 
With palfreys footed like a cow. 

At last, when battle seemed in vain. 
And Paradise too near and plain, 
A dusty whirlwind brought him aid. 
As Cyprian Venus, robed in shade. 
Through Ilian sunlight flew to save 
Her Phrygian prince from Grecian glaive. 
Our Yankee spake no parting word. 
But darted panting through the herd, 
And, scuttling fifty yards unseen. 
Attained a river's huge ravine. 
Where, scrambling o'er the rocky edge, 
He perched upon a dizzy ledge. 

A moment's peace, a moment's breath, 
And then, with piercing, cattish neigh. 
Those quadrupeds of Satan tore 
To seek their prey and catch their death; 
For, plunging o'er the rocky brae, 
And tumbling half a mile or more. 



98 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

They perished all that very day, 
As scholars know who thither go 
To find their skeletons below. 

XLIII 

Full little recked our errant knight 
What coursers these might be, or when 
They bursted out of primal night 
To batter paleolithic men; 
For, staring down with gladsome soul, 
To watch the cursed pigmies roll. 
He saw a spectacle that reft 
His mind from everything beside; 
He saw a mighty river stride 
In frenzy through a mountain cleft, — 
A river that fulfilled his gaze 
With something wilder than amaze. 

A thousand yards below the eye 
It foamed, between titanic walls 
So dizzy high they seemed anigh. 
Though far apart for trumpet-calls. 
And both the lofty ramparts frowned 
In shapes like masonries of man : 
Swart fortresses a league around. 
Dike, castle, turret, barbican, 
Or altars, temples, pagods vast, 
Wliere stony demons scowled aghast; 
Yea, everywhere the fiends had built 
Some lair of cruelty and guilt 
As huge and grim and horrible 
As are the palaces of Hell. 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 99 

Below, — far down, — alone, — in gloom, — 
The haunting Jinn of a giant tomb — 
A river hurled its glittering spume, — 
A prisoned sprite that sought to flee — 
A captive mad to reach the sea 
And perish there, but perish free. 

XLIV 

In any world of sin or bliss 
No other river is like this, 
So horrible, so stern, so sad, 
So dungeoned close, so raving mad. 
It seems an angel fallen, curst. 
Forever ruined, knowing the worst, 
Abhorred, pursued and scourged for crime, 
Yet ever fierce, superb, sublime. 
And grandly suffering alone, 
Like Satan on his burning throne. 

And he who gazed upon it then 
Believed he gazed on demon tide. 
Right perilous to lives of men. 
And perilous to souls beside ; 
Yet faltered not to follow it, 
For, far along the awful moat. 
He saw the wizard maiden sit 
A billow-tost and fleeting boat. 

He knew his prey; he left the brow; 
He won the base, no matter how; 
Such heroes win whatever aim. 
Though death confront and Eblis flame. 
The strand attained, he bounded swift 

L.ofC. 



100 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

O'er frothing rift and bowlder drift 
Until he found a frowsy kraal, 
Half burrowed 'neath the mountain wall, 
Whose naked folk had fled before 
That avalanche of eldritch steeds, 
But left upon their darkling shore 
A skiff that suited Downing's needs. 
He launched in waves of speeding snow, 
He made the lumpish paddle quiver. 
And flew as though Apollo's bow 
Had sent him whizzing down the river. 

XLV 

I trow that every stream enchanted 
Is passing glorious to behold; 

I trow its magic banks are haunted 
By goblin lords of mighty mould. 

I trow those demons live in pleasure, 
Begirt with tower and castle wall. 

And often tread the festive measure. 
And banquet oft in princely hall. 

And whoso reaches those dominions. 
They look adown and beck him in 

Because they long for earthly minions 
To serve for them at feasts of sin. 

Ah, bitter woe to dazzled mortals 
Who enter where the .fiends ordain ! 

For none who pass those iron portals 
Shall issue forth or smile again. 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPAXOAGS. lOI 

Yea, also woe to spirits daring 

Who shake the head and hasten by! 

For griefs will follow their wayfaring 
Until they envy those who die. 

No, neither just nor evil liver 

May wholly 'scape from hazards fell, 

Who ventures down enchanted river 
And dares the seraphim of Hell. 

XLVI 

However fair to fiendish sprites 
That magic valley may have been, 
It gloomed to Downing's troubled een 
The horriblest of earthly sights. 
On every side the horizon 
Was half a league above his head; 
The welkin was an azure thread 
'Twixt dizzy walls of jagged stone. 
He saw no blooming, verdant thing, 
Nor any beast, nor any bird; 
That woful torrent never heard 
The heavenly sound of song or wing. 

The lanskip seemed a part of Hell, 
Except that smoke and flame had failed; 
You marveled why no demon sailed 
With shrieks along the fearful dell. 
It had a countenance like sin, 
It had a countenance like death; 
The gazer almost lost his breath 
To think that he was caged therein. 



102 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

It bosomed many monstrous seats 
Of ruin, marvelous in form ; 
And every one upheld a swarm 
Of stony goblins and afreets. 
Yea, every cyclopean hold, 
Keep, turret, castle, knightly pile. 
Pagoda, temple, altar, aisle. 
Was browed with devils manifold. 
Fiom every face and front and height 
The surly horrors glared adown. 
Some forward leaned with spiteful frown, 
Some starting back in hideous fright. 
On every flinty lip a curse 
Of ghoulish hate was petrified, 
As though malignantly they died, 
Impenitent, for aye perverse. 
Words cannot tell how^ fierce they were, 
Nor how their horror filled the place; 
It seemed that never hope of grace 
Might visit him who wandered there. 



XLVII 

Beneath these altitudes of woe 
The cursed river, far below, 
Fled arrow-like with endless moan 
Along a groove of solid stone ; 
Now speeding sheets of lucent glass 
Adown a straight and roomy pass; 
Now tossing crests of angry foam 
By thwarting pinnacle and dome ; 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPAXOAGS. IO3 

Now charging over waterfalls 

With glinting hoofs and trumpet-calls ; 

Forever mad to reach the main, 

To 'scape its dungeon, break its chain. 

The jinns of that infernal land 
Pursued our knight with heavy hand. 
And vexed him sore for venturing in 
Their realm of punishment and sin. 
A dozen cataracts a day 
He ran in hissing foam and spray ; 
A dozen times he lost his boat, 
Rejoiced if he himself could float; 
A dozen times, if not a score. 
He swam to gather bark and oar ; 
And recommenced with constant soul 
His venture down the stream of dole. 

A month he chased the flying maid. 
And then another, undismayed 
By coiling eddy, leaping wave. 
By deserts lonesome as the grave. 
By goblin palace, wizard lair, 
By impish scowl or ghoulish glare. 
But eftersoon (while flitting swift 
Along a shadowy mountain rift, 
A dizzy mile from brow to base. 
Where never midday showed its face) 
He met a host of savage foes 
And half rejoiced to feel their blows, 
So dreary was his soul, so fain 
To greet some living wight again. 



I04 ' THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

XLVIII 

No doubt the centuries of old, 
Ere Adam walked in Paradise, 
Had beasts of various monstrous mould 
Whose forms would thunderstrike our eyes. 
But none of those abnormal shapes 
Would fright us nearer unto death 
Than certain birds, as big as apes, 
Whose yardlong bills were fringed with teeth. 
Such nondescripts, the very last 
Of their primeval, devilish breed. 
Now hasted swift as mountain blast 
To serve the Wampanoag's need. 

In all the years that Downing fought 
He waged no madder, wilder strife; 
And more than once he grimly thought 
Those snapping fowl would end his life. 
They wheeled above with deafening shriek, 
They banged with pinion, tore with beak, 
And fetched the gore in many a streak. 
In vain he hurtled blow on blow ; 
His sabre merely gashed the air. 
In vain he drew his wizard bow ; 
The creatures dodged, with room to spare. 
At last, despairing how to win 
The puzzling fight by martial might, 
The fancy came that he might grin 
The feathered pests to death, or flight. 

Like Crockett he could grin the bark 
Off gnarled and knotty oaken trees 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. IO5 

And leave the awestruck wood as stark 
And glossy as a Holland cheese. 
But how should merely human jaws 
Excel in grinning goblin things 
Who had as many teeth as saws, 
And bills outmeasuring their wings? 
They formed a circle round the chief 
And grinned as only they knew how; 
They smirked him nearly blind and deaf, 
They smiled him raw from chin to brow. 
They grinned his epaulets to dust, 
The lace and buttons from his suit ; 
They grinned his scabbard clean of rust. 
They nearly grinned him to a brute. 
The hero's strategy was lost 
On hostiles built for dental fame; 
And so, in anguish terror-tost, 
He sabred on till evening came. 



XLIX 

Till evening came he sabred on. 
And then the victory was won ; 
For Beelzebub had made his fowls 
With other views of life than owls. 
They dropped asleep at sunset hour 
Precisely like a closing flower, 
Nor ever knew what happened next ; 
For Dow^ning, panting forth a text 
Of jubilee, put sword in sheath, 
And sawed their heads off with their teeth. 



I06 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Again victorious in fight, 
He dallied not till morning light, 
But dared the murky stream and flew 
To prodigies and perils new. 
Another day, aye many more 
He quivered swiftly down the roar 
And spume of that enchanted tide, 
With goblin sights on every side, 
So nondescript in shape and size. 
So madly marvelous in dies. 
So otherworldly and unsightly. 
That he alone can paint them rightly. 



"I'll do my very best endeavor," 
He writes in tones of modest doubt, 
"To give a notion of the river 
An' countries piled up roundabout. 
The banks got loftier an' steeper 
A mile or two from top to base; 
While, underneath, the trough got deeper, 
The current speedier in pace. 

*T spanked along through signs an' wonders 
Tremenjous big, but all in ruins. 
Which seemed to me like Satan's blunders, 
Instead of Heavenly Wisdom's doins. 
I saw pagodas, domes, pavilions 
Consid'able like works of Hindoos, 
With spires an' pinnacles by millions, 
An' hoss-shoe doors an' p'inted windows; 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 10/ 

No eend of battlements an' ditches, 
Redoubts an' bastions, gates an' towers, 
As though the fallen spooks an' witches 
Expected siege by angel powders ; 
And, now an' then, a mile-long frigate 
Aground upon a mile-high crag, 
With goblins bustlin' round to rig it, 
Or histin' up old Nipton's flag; 
Besides the most enormous picturs ! 
A mile of paint at every wdiack ! 
Red, yaller, purple, speckled mixturs, 
Or grizzled, foxy, green an' black. 
"In idol-fixins there were Dagons 
An' Baals an' jNIolochs by the hunderd. 
An' many other gods of pagans. 
The biggest part all cracked an' sundered. 
No eend of shapes from morn to sundown 
Of every size an' every kind ; 
Three hundred miles my barky run down 
Afore I left the town behind. 
An' nawthin' right, or straight, or solid 
From north to south; it seemed a pity 
Hard-workin' imps should be so stolid. 
An' only build a ruined city. 



LI 

'Tn short, the place was awful leaky, 
An' skussly fit to shelter codgers; 
But, shaky though it was an' leaky. 
It had a swarmin' swath of lodg^ers. 



I08 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

On every side were tribes an' nations 

Of spooks an' fiends as black as jet, 

Who sot outside their habitations, 

As though the rooms were overhet. 

At first I felt a leetle skeery 

To see 'em standin' round so large; 

But purty soon I got more cheery 

An' quite disposed to make a charge; 

Because I presently diskivered, 

By dint of boldly pokin' round, 

The struttin' fiends were chicken-livered 

An' not the chaps to hold their ground. 

I couldn't make 'em face a scrimmage, 

For when they spied old Downing come, 

They had a way of changin' image 

To make believe they wer'n't to hum. 

They looked Apollyons, fierce an' furious 

Enough to make apostles run ; 

But when you mounted 'em 'twas curious 

How suddintly they'd turn to stun. 

"To-wit, I cruised around a castle 
Ten times as big as Bunker Hill, 
Where devils challenged me to wrastle 
On every stoop an' winder-sill. 
But when I landed clost below it. 
With hopes to capture what was in it. 
The foxy creeturs seemed to know it, 
An' changed to granite in a minute. 
'Twas jest the same in forty places : 
I'd see the longtailed imps in flocks, 
A-bendin' down their horned faces ; 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. lOQ 



An' then I'd reach a pile of rocks. 
I couldn't find a hoof or feather, 
Nor catch a whiff of brimstun smell ; 
But all the same, I'd bet a wether 
I traveled through a part of hell." 



LII 

So sturdy Downing wandered down 
The wizard canon of the West, 
And only saw a Stygian town 
Where some would spy the mansions blest, 
Or pillared jinn, or chained afreet. 
Or hear the loreleis chanting sweet. 

Its solemn gulfs and awful steeps, 
Its crests and pinnacles sublime, 
Its giant cities, hurled in heaps. 
Its wondrous mimicry and mime 
Of every mighty Avork that man 
Has builded since the world began, 
Its glories all, were naught to him 
Bitt lairs of fiendish seraphim. 
A solid knight of common sense, 
A puritan of faith intense, 
He knew Apollyon's sooty face 
Behind the veil of fay or grace; 
He saw his gloomy wings o'erspread 
Sublime abyss or mountain head. 
And felt his deadly malice quiver 
In every fair enchanted river. 

But like the most of humankind, 



no THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

He found the things he looked to find; 

He found the demons and their power 

From early dawn to sunset hour; 

He felt their poisoned talons rive 

Wherever he might drive or strive; 

And here especially he knew 

The crowning rage of Satan's crew, 

The utmost malice Hell could brew. 

Full oft its spunkies overset 

His skiff and left him dripping wet; 

Or dragged him like a helpless girl 

For hours around an eddy's whirl; 

Or slung him like a javelin 

Adown a cataract's foaming din. 

From morn to night they plagued his path ; 

For many a day he felt their wrath. 



LIII 

At last he 'scaped that realm accurst; 
Athwart its southern gate he burst. 
He saw the demon ramparts rise 
Behind, against the northern skies. 
The river dimpled smooth and clear 
Through forests gay with flowery dies, 
And songs of birds rejoiced his ear. 
The world was still alive, he knew, 
And knew it with a glad surprise, 
And almost wept to find it true. 
Such thankful heartbeats reached his eyes. 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. Ill 

He glanced ahead ; he spied his prey, 
And cheerly hasted on his way, 
Like one who sees a prize anear, 
A glorious guerdon long since due. 
The wage of many a toilsome year, 
A trophy sought since life was new. 
He felt athirst; he dipped his hand. 
And found the savor of the sea; 
The continent was past, and he 
Had entered into sunset-land. 
That hour the Wampanoag lost 
Her witchcraft, — lost her strength to fly; 
He saw her useless paddle crossed, 
Her visage drooped as though to die. 
He reached and clutched her nerveless arm; 
He dragged her in his own canoe ; 
Then sate and gazed, nor offered harm, 
For sudden pity smote him through. 



LIV 

She veiled her head to welcome death; 
She uttered not a pleading breath. 

He seemed to have before his face 
The very last of a fallen race, 
The last of many a tribe and clan. 
The final soul of red-skinned man. 
He could not even wish to slay 
A thing so pitiful and meek. 
Instead, he raised his hand to stay 
A tear from sliding down his cheek. 



12 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

He felt like one who journeys slow 
In some funereal train of woe, 
And cannot find a bitter word, 
Although the corpse to be interred 
Was once his hated, harmful foe. 

Awhile they floated down the tide. 
And still the maiden never sighed, 
Nor uttered any speech of wail, 
Although perhaps her spirit cried 
To gods who helped her sires prevail. 
Or bravely bear the mortal blow, 
In forest battles long ago. 
At last there came a gentle shiver, 
And calmly lifting up her veil. 
She showed a visage wan and pale. 
But full of witchery as ever. 
One glance aloft, to morning's glow. 
That seemed to say, ''Manitto, hail!" 
Then softly rocking to and fro. 
She poured her deathsong o'er the river. 



LV 

I am of Wampanoag race; 

I come of many sagamores. 
My fathers saw the white man's face. 

And gave it welcome to their shores. 
They welcomed it, and where are they? 
Who was it trampled them to clay? 



THE LAST OF THE WAMPANOAGS. 1 

I bear the blood of Metacom,* 
The chief of Wampanoag chiefs. 

He struck to save his forest home, 
He struck at insolence and griefs. 

Aye, who forgot his father's name, 

And broke his brother's heart with shame? 

He filled New England earth with graves ; 

He filled New England air with fire; 
He slew a thousand paleface braves ; 

Slew child and mother with the sire; 
He paid the blood-debt every whit, 
' And I am glad to think of it. 

Where are the warriors of my clan? 

They sleep as sleep the valiant dead. 
There was no Wampanoag man 

But fell with hatchet dripping red. 
Your longknives heard their dying groans ; 
Your ploughshares grate among their bones. 

They left to me what freemen could 
Who perished for their homes in vain ; 

They left a heritage of blood. 

Of vengeance crazing heart and brain ; 

A mission to avenge their fate, 

A deathless heritage of hate. 

* The Indian name of King Philip. His elder brother, 
imprisoned in profound peace by the settlers, died of 
humiHation. His wife and son were sold into slavery 
in the West Indies. 



114 TPIE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

But now my lifelong task is done, 
For I have reached the further West, 

The ocean of the setting sun. 

Where all our homeless tribes will rest, 

Will halt beside the pathless deep 

And sing their funeral songs, and sleep. 

Thank Heaven ! the paleface cannot save ! 

He cannot put aside my hour. 
I would not live to be a slave, 

Nor even honored in his power. 
I come, O Metacom, to thee. 
As fits a Wampanoag, free! 



She ended here her funeral chant. 

And while her captor barkened still, 
She rose and threw herself aslant 

So quick he could not check her will- 
So quick he hardly drew a breath 
Before she passed the gate of death. 



THE GENTLE EARL 



ni 

THE GENTLE EARL 



Full many knight puts lance in rest 
Against a foeman fair in front, 
Expecting there to fight his best 
And there to find the battle's brunt, 
Nor doubts that yet a fiercer foe 
Behind him comes at charging speed, 
Who levels spear to lay him low 
Before he does a valiant deed. 

So Downing rode from day to day 
With loaded gun and sharpened steel 
To seek adventure far away 
And shiver skulls for others' weal, 
Nor guessed that, had he bided home, 
And calmly dozed in elbow-chair 
His dourest enemies had come 
To wage him bitter battle there. 

Without a fear the hero went; 
He held that Shiloh dwelt secure; 
He trusted angel-pinions bent 
Above his child and kept her sure ; 
And all his knightly spirit leaned 
A-front to spy the sooty wings 
Of fallen angel, imp and fiend, 
And hear their frightful challengings. 



Il8 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

For lately woful tidings ran 
That lofty potentates of sin 
Had entered Salem with their clan 
And built anew their state therein ; 
Proposing thence to clamor down 
(Believe the story those who will) 
And scourge with burnings Boston town 
And drive our flag from Bunker Hill. 



II 

He reached the town at sunset stroke, 
And found it bare of christian folk; 
For none who' dreaded Satan's snares, 
Or valued sleep or evening prayers 
Would bide within a haunted land 
Where Tophet held the upper hand. 
Where every night the lanskip shook 
With rigadoons of witch and spook. 
And even sheriffs stirred their boots 
To flight before Apollyon's hoots. 

Through desert ways the hero hied, 
With silent homes on either side, 
Nor creature spied of mortal frame. 
Unless perchance a withered dame 
Of evil fame for dance and song 
At mid of night with Satan's throng. 

Anon he won the oaken wood 
Where Tophet's mongrel multitude 
Rejoiced to waltz the night away 
In Reverend Cotton Mather's day. 



THE GENTLE EARL. I IQ 

Yet there he found but evening dusk, 
Perfumed by yellow woodbine musk, 
And brightly rayed with argent sheaves 
Of moonlight sliding through the leaves. 
He tethered horse and paced the shade 
With pistol cocked and naked blade ; 
For hours he wandered to and fro. 
Alive to every firefly's glow, 
To every hoot of owl, or flight 
Of bat or insect through the night ; 
Hoping at every breath to hear 
The hellish anthem storming near; 
But watching, harking all in vain 
Until a terror filled his brain 
Lest Belial's crew had spied him there 
And called its congress otherwhere. 



Ill 

But when the hour of midnight fell. 
No doubt, no doubt, there was a hell ! 
He heard its awful legions come 
Through distant gloom with swelling hum. 
As though Apollyon's rebel sprites 
That moment fell from Eden's heights, 
An avalanche of sin and woe, 
Tremendous e'en in overthrow. 
Afar he heard them ; then anear ; 
A levin brood, both there and here; 
Their pinions filling night with soughs, 
And smiting 'thwart the groaning boughs, 



I20 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

As though contending tempests drove 
On mighty pens along the grove. 

The air was ghastly overhead 
With monsters fit to fright the dead: 
The shapes that fallen angels wear 
To symbolize their fierce despair : 
Unshriven ghouls in winding sheets, 
Fantastic hydras, swart afreets, 
Titanic dragons winged with fire, 
Or formless forms — chimaeras dire: 
AVith clouds of weirdly pigmy things 
Who whirred like bats on leathery wings, 
All settling black on either hand 
And smutting miles of forest land. 

Behind arrived the wizard broods 
In pairs, in flocks, in multitudes. 
The women flaunting through the gloom 
On shooting switch or bouncing broom ; 
The men astride of bucking goat. 
Or wayward calf, or wheezing shoat. 
Of every age and rank they came. 
The lowly scrub, the dainty dame. 
The ruffled squire, the ragged boor. 
The Indian tramp, the smirking moor. 
The puckered hag, the brazen jade, 
With here and there a rosy maid 
Whose visage wore a seraph-smile. 
Yet had an undergleam of guile. 



THE GENTLE EARL. 121 



IV 



And Downing spied among the crew 
At least a dozen whom he knew 
And hitherto had held for sure 
As chosen spirits, levites pure, 
Nor guessed that, underneath their show 
Of sanctimonious joy or woe, 
They were the sons of Ashtoreth 
And walked in secret ways of death. 

Immensely dazed our hero was 
To find the squires of Zion's laws 
Communing with the rascal horde 
Of those who call the devil Lord. 
But being blest with Yankee sense, 
He straightway drew the inference 
That all who taste of sin's delight 
In open day or veiling night, 
No matter how they garb their lives, 
Are neophytes of wizard hives 
Who come perforce to Satan's whirls 
And dance to every tune he skirls. 

Yet all the keener grew his fear 
Because he found acquaintance here; 
For doubts befell lest even he 
Had bended unaware the knee 
To reverence the lord of Dis, 
And might receive the branding kiss, 
And find himself among the mell 
Of those who jig their way to hell. 
The whimsy scared ; he turned to go ; 



22 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

He fled on skulking tip of toe; 
He groped in whirls of sulphur-smoke, 
And fell within a hollow oak; 
There, goggling through a gnarly hole, 
He watched aghast the hideous shoal 
Of wizard, fiend and imp and troll. 



Anon a silence fell ; and then 
The giant Enemy of men 
Arose with pipe in hand, and blew 
A rune that pierced the forest through 
With melody grotesque and shrill, 
Yet sweet enough to bow the will, 
To fire the blood and turn the brain. 
To make a man forget his pain, 
Or joy, forget his natal sod. 
His very name, his very God. 

Our hero marveled much to weet 
A note so ravishing and sweet, 
So otherwise from all that he 
Had thought infernal tunes to be ; 
And, harking still, he felt a strong 
Desire to join the warlock throng. 
And bow before the devil's throne. 
And dance, although he danced alone. 
How think of duty, think of shame, 
How care for honor's haught acclaim. 
For altars, fires and native land. 
Or seraph choir, or sainted band, 



THE GENTLE EARL. 1 23 

When trills of demon music stole 
From bar to bar of all the soul? 
When earth and Eblis listened mute 
To Lucifer's beguiling flute? 

But halting yet in ways of guilt, 
He chanced to touch his sabre's hilt. 
The touch was magical ; once more 
He heard Columbia's battle roar ; 
He heard through smoke of volleying guns 
Undaunted Freedom call her sons, 
The drummer's roll, the bugler's peal, 
The hissing ball, the clashing steel ; 
He heard them clear, he heard them all, 
And answered back the glorious call. 
The fighting blood of a valiant race 
Rolled flaming through his farmer face ; 
He drew his blade and forth he ran 
To die perchance, but die a man. 



vr 

What evil thing of hell or earth 
Can bravely meet a soul of worth? 
A thousand demons, gathered there, 
Dispersed before one patriot's stare. 
They knew Columbia's federal head. 
And leaped aloft in sudden dread ; 
Yea; trolls and wizards, imps and spooks 
Flew up the trees like frighted rooks. 

But, when they saw a single wight 
Defied their many-headed might, 



124 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

They rustled down with thunder-shout 
And hemmed him closely roundabout, 
A weirder, wickeder array 
Than ever dares the face of day, 
All watching him with settled eyes 
Of fury mixed with stark surprise. 

A little pause. Then forward came 
A wretch who mumbled Downing's name 
A ghastly creature, stiff and cold, 
A ghoul escaped from burial mould. 
The carrion of a deacon whom 
Our chief had followed to the tomb, 
A month agone, and left him there 
With bended head and mournful stare. 

This foul apostate, full of guile. 
Advanced with stony eye and smile 
And proffered fist, but all the while 
His speechless muzzle yawned apart 
To suck the blood of Downing's heart. 
Aroint! what worthy wight could take 
In patience that cadaverous shake, 
The touch of that defiling hand ! 
Our Greatheart flashed his ready brand 
Athwart the smirking, noisome hound, 
And spread his halves along the ground. 

Instanter all that wizard troop 
Volcanoed forth a mongrel whoop, 
A discord vast of yelp and howl. 
Of hoot and snarl and bleat and growl; 
While many-fashioned hideous maws 
Disparted : alligator jaws. 



THE GENTLE EARL. 125 

Revealing yards of glinting teeth, 
Or goatish mouths with beards beneath, 
A'iparian muzzles, clattering bills, 
And tusked snouts and scaly gills ; 
All pouring spiteful threats and jeers, 
While Downing vainly stopped his ears. 

A moment thus they lifted high 
Their slogan, scaring earth and sky; 
And then the wondrous fight began — 
All Eblis 'gainst a single man. 



VII 

*'It was the daintiest of brushes," 
Our Yankee Caesar calmly writes, 
''An' what with double teeth an' tushes 
I got a fisher's luck of bites. 
The stunted trash begun the flurry. 
As leetle chaps are apt to dew ; 
They scaled around me hurry-scurry 
\\'ith every kind of spit an' mew. 
They stung an' pizened like muskeeters 
Until I fairly danced with pain, 
An' rubbed me with their bristly feeturs, 
An' allays rubbed agin the grain. 
But, what was specially disgustin'. 
They'd skip atop of me an' crow 
To make believe that I was bustin' 
An' hadn't many steps to go. 
But all the same, I kep' a-whirlin' 
Mv heftv sabre 'round mv head. 



126 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

An' sent at least a hundred skirlin', 
An' left a hundred more for dead. 
"At last I druv the pigmy passel 
To scatter out an' fly like chafif; 
An' then begun the serious wrastle 
With Beelzebub an' puss'nal staff. 
The first I tackled was a dragon, 
A dozen yards from snoot to tail, 
With eyes a chap could hang a flag on, 
An' pinions like a lugger's sail. 
But when I punched the bloated critter 
I found him nawthin' but a skin ; 
He wasn't even stuft'ed with litter. 
An' vanished when I punched agin. 
That raised my grit; I recollected 
That Satan flies the spunky saint; 
An' so I purty soon dissected 
Another dragon's gilt an' paint. 



VIII 

" 'Twas jest the same with all the boodle 
Of shapes from regions underneath; 
They couldn't face a puppy poodle 
Who had the grit to show his teeth. 
I collared demon, imp an' devil, 
Apollyon, Moloch, Beelzebub, 
An' made the puffy vermin travel 
Like squirrels through the oaken scrub. 
They stood about as poor a tussle 
As flocks of guinea-hens an' geese; 



THE GENTLE EARL. 12/ 

In fact they hadn't any muscle, 
An' didn't weigh a pound apiece. 

''The only shapes that give me trouble 
Belonged to granther Noah's herd; 
For instance, wizards an' their rubble 
Of ghoul an' vampyre, beast an' bird. 
The women sartinly did scuffle 
An' scratch an' claw like all possest ; 
They didn't leave me half a ruffle, 
Nor narv^ button down my vest. 
The warlocks, too, were tough curmudgeons 
Who did their best to whack an' stab 
With pitchforks, cobblestones an' bludgeons. 
Or any wepm they could grab. 

'T had an hour or two of battle 
Afore I druv the human crowd. 
Whereas the longtailed, flying cattle 
Of Hell had vanished like a cloud ; 
From whence I dare to draw conclusion 
That only spooks of mortal birth 
(Ourselves perhaps) can work confusion, 
An' reely hurt the sons of earth. 
Now, like enough you've heerd the stories 
That all my wizards, imps an' sprites 
Were nawthin more 'n a troop of tories 
Who met in Salem woods of nights. 
But never mind these doubts an' cavils : 
They worry Downing not a jot; 
He fought with somethin' — men or devils, — 
An' won the fight — no matter what." 



128 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

IX 

The parlous strife was scarce completed 
Before a headlong rider came, 
His rowels red, his courser heated. 
His visage pale, his eyes a-flame, 
Who touched his hat in salutation 
And shouted, 'Tutnam sends me here 
To tell you how the bulls of Bashan 
Are charging round our flanks and rear. 
From Canada Burgoyne is striding 
To reach us through the Hudson way, 
While other scarlet hordes are gliding 
From Newport up Rhode Island Bay. 
Nor pillage do they crave, nor slaughter; 
They come with neither cord nor fire; 
They only seek your gracious daughter 
To hold in hostage for her sire. 
For seers have told the king of Britain 
That whilst your mighty arm is free, 
The Lion shall be surely smitten. 
And Yankees never bow the knee." 

Thereon the rider wheeled and hurried 
Away o'er meadow, hill and dell. 
While Downing straddled mare and scurried 
To succor Shiloh ere it fell. 



X 

This planet hath no fairer sight 
Than men who march in ranks aright, 
Responding to the drummer's beat 



THE GENTLE EARL. 1 29 

\\'ith measured tread of sounding feet, 

Their shining arms at even slant 

And not a visage turned askant, 

The column straight from front to rear 

And angled like a shapely pier, 

As though a granite wall should come 

Along the ways to sound of drum. 

So marched the scarlet-coated men 
Who sought the Shiloh Lion's den; 
While tory horse in careless ranks 
Patrolled the van, the rear, the flanks ; 
And, far in advance, loosely strayed 
Six braves to watch for ambuscade. 

Some yards before the musketeers 
A fiery courser pricked his ears 
And stamped the earthly ways in scorn 
As though he were a steed of Morn 
Who longed to set his wings a-flare 
And transverse avenues of air. 
This charger lightly bore along 
The chief of all the martial throng, 
A gracious youth of noble mould 
In brave attire of red and gold. 
Whose lilied cheek and flaxen curls 
Reminded one of youngling girls. 
A noble youth he surely was, 
Wlio dearly loved his country's cause, 
And loved his king with reverence, 
Xor dreaded death in their defence ; 
\\'ho also loved his ancient name. 
And longed to give it statelier fame 



130 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Than any that his sires had won 

Crusading 'neath Judean sun ; 

And therefore loved the trumpet's bray^ 

The battle set in proud array, 

The volley's crash, the cannonade, 

The gleam of bayonet and blade. 



XI 

No lord was he of mean degree, 
But famed for state and pedigree. 
Of many castles was he heir. 
And none a castle in the air ; 
But each upon its craggy steep, 
A massy pile of tower and keep. 
Wherein were story-haunted halls 
With armored shapes along the walls; 
And each within a spacious fief 
Of grain and turf and oaken leaf, 
Where ravens prophecied of woe 
To antlered deer a-drowse below. 

But (better loved than all of this) 
He left behind a mother's kiss, 
And also left the pure embrace 
Of girlish sisters, fair of face, 
Who yet of lovers had no ken, 
And thought him grandest man of men. 
He carried next his gentle heart 
Their letters sweet, and, while apart 
From other folk, would read anew 
The kindly wish and fond adieu, 



THE GENTLE EARL. 



131 



And gladly think of days to come 
When glorious peace would send him home 
To hear those blessing angels speak, 
With tears and kisses on his cheek. 



XII 

He held a letter even now 
Beneath his eyes and bended brow 
When suddenly arose the keen 
Crack of a Mingo carabine; 
And, glancing down a sidelong rift, 
He spied a maiden riding swift 
While close behind her lightly ran 
A leather-garbed and painted man. 

In vain she rode ; the cunning shot 
Had deftly sought a vital spot. 
He saw the courser plunge and die ; 
He saw the maiden rise and fly ; 
He saw the Mingo's gleaming knife. 
And spurred amain to save a life. 
He won ; he tore the maid from death ; 
He reached her while she stopped for breath 
And turned with horror-stricken glance 
To face the wolfish foe's advance. 
He fiercely wheeled his fiery bay, 
And drove the savage from his prey. 

She seemed a maid of twenty years ; 
Her eyes were azure through her tears ; 
Her countenance was passing fair, 
Despite the pallor of despair; 



132 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Her golden locks had broken free, 

And she was gold from crown to knee, 

A creature beautiful to see. 



XIII 

I find that never wight of worth 
Can go, no matter where, on earth, 
But men divine his honored name, 
And point him out, and tell his fame. 
This lordly youth could scarcely save 
An ambushed girl from savage glaive 
And hide her safe behind his van, 
Before a passing dotard man 
Uplifted ragged hat and smiled, 
And greeted her as Downing's child. 

Ah! mighty was the captor's joy; 
He colored like a gladdened boy ; 
For chance had compassed what he planned, 
And triumph overbrimmed his hand. 
But all the hotter flushed his face 
Because his captive's piteous grace, 
(Unconsciously and lacking guile) 
Had made him long to win her smile. 

So, while he faced his ranks about 
And cheerly trode the seaward route. 
He brought her wherewithal to ride 
And journeyed courteous by her side. 
Beseeching pardon for the wrong- 
He did in haline her alone ; 



Or grieving o'er the bloody shame 



THE GENTLE EARL. I 33 



Of strife 'twixt men of English name 
Or trustmg that her sire would bring 
New loyalty to crown and king, 
And garner clemency for those 
Who now were Britain's valiant foes ; 
With many other words of ruth. 
Befitting well a noble youth 
Who followed gentilesse in sooth. 



XIV 

It is an easy thing, I hold, 
For youngling souls of kindly mould, 
Who journey lonely side by side. 
To think of altar, groom and bride. 
So presently this English earl 
Began to love our Yankee girl. 
And strove with every tender art 
To reach the heaven within her heart ; 
Though gallantly ashamed to tell 
His suit to captive damozel, 
So virginal was he in soul. 
So chivalrous and soft to dole. 
Yet many gracious words he passed, 
And many yearning glances cast. 
Or smiled to meet her dreamy gaze. 
And offered service in courtly ways. 

But how could Esther think of love ? 
Her mind was drawn to things above ; 
Her heart was otherworldly pure. 
She knew no girlish guess or lure ; 



34 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

And when she hfted up her eyes 

Of azure Hght to azure skies 

She purposed not to dazzle men, 

Nor g-uessed that she was comely then ; 

She only lifted them to pray 

That worldly thoughts might pass away. 



XV 

By day the column seaward strode — 
At night a country squire's abode 
Secluded Esther. Near at hand 
The earl encamped with all his band. 
That evening, while a zither played, 
He sang a lovelorn serenade. 
And watched her gentle face askant 
With longing that the fervid chant 
Might win the smile he loved to see, 
Or win her heart, if that could be. 

But Esther thought it worldly song. 
And doubted sore of doing wrong- 
In hearing such a lightsome strain 
With any feeling but of pain. 
And when he pleaded she would sing, 
She made the roomy mansion ring 
With solemn airs and pious lays, 
The psalmodies of olden days 
When captive Hebrews choired beside 
Euphrates and the Kebar's tide. 

It made him wondrous sad to hear 
Such melodies from one so dear. 



THE GENTLE EARL. I 35 

How should his spirit ever win 
Such altitudes, so clear of sin ! 
How could her holy soul descend 
To know him, even as a friend ! 
Anear they sat, yet far apart — 
A mighty gulf 'twixt heart and heart — 
So passed in vain the lovelorn day, 
As lovelorn lives have passed away. 

XVI 

Not every earthly sight can be 
So clear as sights behind the eye; 
Xot every mortal man doth see 
If this be true, or that a lie. 
I think each human doth create 
No little of this world of dole, 
And shapes his daily life and state 
Accordant with his fateful soul. 
One meeteth ghouls and sheeted ghosts 
And witches foul and murky sprites ; 
Another meeteth saintly hosts 
And angel wings and Eden lights. 
One findeth only bitter strife 
And corpses stark and weapons bare ; 
Another, naught but peaceful life 
And gladsome creatures everywhere. 

So burly Downing, born for war, 
And nursed on battle's smoke and flame, 
Found earth a very different star 
From her who bore his honored name. 



36 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

No matter whither fared his girl, 
She quickly won, as told above, 
Some worshipper, perhaps an earl, 
Who longed to save and serve and love ; 
While he, the hero, hero-like, 
Met hazards numberless and dire, 
Forever pushed to draw and strike 
Through men and demons, blood and fire. 

And now, yet panting from the broil 
With Salem's wizard crew, he spurred 
To save his threatened home, and moil 
The British ranks and Tory herd. 
The odds were huge, the peril light : 
A coming nation nerved his arm : 
A prototype of might and right 
May front a host without alarm. 



XVII 

But nearing home, our Romus found 
The village still above the ground, 
And heard from many a rustic scout 
How Albion's troop had faced about, 
And also how his gracious child 
Had fared to meet him through the wild, 
And vanished, none could settle where, 
Though many sought her trail with care. 
Thereon he bade them seek again, 
And hied away with flowing rein 
To hunt the Lion's scarlet files 
From solid land to Brandon's Isles. 



THE GENTLE EARL. 13/ 

Good lack ! how many snares bestrowed 
His way, whichever way he rode ! 
For warriors trained in weird deceit 
Protected England's slow retreat 
With stratagems of forest guile 
That made each furlong twice a mile. 
At last, so weary grew the track, 
He fell asleep upon his hack, 
And jolted on with knightly snore, 
As though a trumpet blew before, 
Till Satan brought the strangest hap 
That ever spoiled a hero's nap. 
He had a dream : he felt a jar : 
He thought himself a shooting star : 
He clutched the mane and hooted, "Who !" — 
The world was thirty feet below ! 

Yes, thirty feet below his boots. 
And thirty-five below his hoots. 
He spied the path he lately trod. 
He spied the shadow-dappled sod, 
And caught through tossing leaves a clear 
Though hasty glimpse of azure mere ; 
While overhead (can this be true?) 
A score or more of comets flew 
And all the demon-stars that hie 
Before a fallen skater's eye. 
At first he thought a Tory wizard 
Had mounted him astride a blizzard 
And sent him whirling overland, 
A prisoner in Satan's hand. 
Who nevermore would deal on earth 



138 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

A valiant stroke or punch of worth. 
But, looking twice, he clearly spied 
His nag beneath, himself astride. 
And also spied around her chest 
A twisted thong of hide undressed. 
Which held her with a condor-grip 
Suspended from a walnut's tip. 



XVIII 

Right choleric was Downing then 
To think that painted heathen men 
Should hoist him with a beastly noose 
Like any doltish wolf or moose. 
But vainly might he snort and rave 
At powwow, sagamore and brave ; 
He found himself no less in air, 
And waltzing like a cultured bear. 
So clutching hard the cowhide twist. 
He shinned aloft, hand ov.er fist ; 
Then seized a bough and deftly swung 
To earth, from leafy rung to rung. 

But how pursue the foe afoot? 
Or how desert a faithful brute 
Who whinnied from her lofty berth 
Her shrill desire to visit earth ? 
Our Ajax searched for axe or spade ; 
But finding neither, drew his blade. 
And hewed as only heroes hew. 
Until he smote the walnut through 
And tumbled it with mournful soughs 



THE GENTLE EARL. 139 

Athwart the woodiand's crowded boughs ; 
Thus landing Dobbin, still alive, 
But scarcely fit to ride or drive. 

In vain he heartened her to rise. 
She lay at length w^ith filmy eyes 
And trembling legs and heaving chest, 
A creature sorely needing rest ; 
While Downing sadly watched her throes. 
Till presently both fell a-doze, 
The courser lying prone, and he 
With folded arms against a tree. 



XIX 

1 hold opinion that the sprites 
Who fell from Eden's shining heights 
Do very rarely slumber well ; 
And often pace their grievous hell. 
Or w^ander Yaveh's universe, 
Bethinking them with zeal perverse 
What manner sin to fashion next 
Whereby to keep the angels vext ; 
Or, chancing near a worthy man, 
Asleep, or watching ill, they plan 
A scurvy scheme to make him gird 
At Yankee Doodle's Baldybird. 

No doubt it was an imp like this, 
A vagrom rogue from burning Dis, 
Who tricksily allured, or drove, 
A Tory robber through the grove, 
And showed him Downing napping there 



140 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

In sentry o'er his napping mare. 

Right well the skulking skinner knew 

The paladin of Freedom's crew 

Whose mighty arm had brought to scorn 

The Lion and the Unicorn. 

So, riving sundry withes of wood, 

He bound the hero where he stood. 

Upright, but slumbering as sound 

As any sleeper underground. 

This done, he stirred his rascal shanks 

To overtake the scarlet ranks, 

And bade their chieftain wheel his men 

To crush Columbia there and then. 



XX 

Erelong the sleeper woke refreshed, 
To find himself securely meshed, 
And see before his wondering eyes 
A painted brave of matchless size : 
A redskin tramp who chanced that way — 
No matter whence — from far a-gley — 
And, finding Shiloh's pinioned son. 
Had halted for some Mingo fun: 
A murderous tramp who brandished slow 
A tomahawk in act to throw. 
And had a leering-, cruel grin 
Between his vulture beak and chin. 

But deadly dark as seemed the case. 
The archetype of Yankee race 
Disdained to utter prayer or cry. 



THE GENTLE EARL. I4I 

And faced his foeman eye to eye 
With such a haughty Marian look 
That even Indian muscles shook, 
And all askant the hatchet flew, 
And mereh' shored a withe in two. 
Instanter stalwart Downing broke 
The rest asunder at a stroke; 
Then seized his gun with hunter sleight 
And dared the scalping Pict to fight. 

Now came a battle like to those 
Of Argive palms and Ilian woes, 
When heroes poured a noble flood 
Of eloquence o'er fields of blood. 
And magnified their godlike skill 
And haught ability to kill. 
Before they drew their brazen blades 
And banged each other through the shades. 



XXI 

''An fust the creetur cussed my vitals," 
We read in Downing's dialect, 
''An' give me forty ugly titles, 
As near as I can recollect. 
He called me squaw an' yankee doodle, 
He called me old an' deaf an' blind. 
He called me fox an' hare an' poodle. 
With other names that skip my mind. 
He swore to have my yaller scallop, 
An' pitch my bones to bears an' hounds. 
He swore to make my sperrit gallop 



142 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

About Manitto's hunting-grounds. 
An' all the time he kep' a' prancin 
Around me, through the underscrub, 
An' rooted brush, an' sent it dancin' ' 
An grinned the bark off many a shrub, 
But purty soon he turned his noddle 
With scootin' round so awful prest, 
An' got so tired he couldn't waddle, 
An had to squat an' ketch a rest. 

"Thereon I took my turn at banter 
An' braggin' how I meant to slay. 
I circled 'round him on a canter. 
An' made the breshwood fly like hay. 
I sent some hefty bowlders spinnin 
About the woods, like skippin' fleas ; 
I fairly beat the coot at grinnin'. 
An' scaled the bark off timber trees. 
Of course I didn't disappint him 
For ugly names an' slander words. 
An' furthermore I 'greed to jint him. 
An' fling his scraps to beasts an' birds. 
I wasn't more than half in arnest, 
I never shone in makin' b'lieve ; 
An' when I tried to scowl my starnest 
I nearly sniggered in my sleeve. 
At last I thought I'd done my duty. 
An' played the Mingo long enough ; 
An' so I told my copper beauty 
To show his liveliest fightin' stuff. 



THE GENTLE EARL. 1 43 

XXII 

"He bounded forrard, feathers wavin', 
An' fetched a yell an' clinched his bow. 
He bent it like it was a shavin', 
Though stiffer than a walnut hoe. 
He pinted up an' belched a holler, 
An' then he pinted at the ground ; 
He got the string behint his collar, 
An' nearly hauled himself around. 

"At last he let the arrer whistle 
(A hickry arrer tipped with stun) ; 
I tell ye, cost me all my gristle 
To stop it with my duckin-gun. 
It traveled like a ritie bullet. 
An' give my lock an awful clip. 
The trigger stuck ; I couldn't pull it 
No more than pull a loaded ship. 
I had to scratch around for tinder, 
An' strike a light to make her hoot. 
But knocked the sachem's bow to Hinder 
Afore he got another shoot. 

"Bymebye we quit our distant scrimmage 
An' sidled up for neighbor talk. 
I used my sword to spile his image ; 
He slashed at mine with tomahawk. 
I found the creetur warn't a pigmy. 
An' had to wrastle like a bear, 
Because he scuffled smart to dig me 
An' reely meant to have my hair. 
We fit like bumblebees in clover. 



144 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Fust one atop an' then the other ; 
But purty soon the fuss was over, 
An' Downing shet of Injun brother. 
I couldn't say jest how it ended, 
An' misremember where I clipt; 
But there the Mingo lay extended. 
The biggest man I ever whipt." 



XXIII 

The battle scarce had gotten end 
Ere Downing saw a thicket bend 
A dozen rods away, and saw^ 
Emerge therefrom a youthful squaw, 
A gliding, crouching shape, with meek 
And timid gaze and wasted cheek. 
And garments travelworn, as though 
She came in vigil, stint and woe 
Through many days of rain or sun 
To find and warn a well-loved one. 

This haggard daughter of the wild 
Bore on her weary back a child. 
And ever, while she stooped along. 
She chanted low a forest song. 
Nor knew that bloody death was here. 
Nor spied the foeman lurking near. 
But hasted on to hinder fate. 
Unwitting that she came too late. 



THE GENTLE EARL. I45 

XXIV 

But when she saw the fallen chief 
She lifted such a keen of grief 
That he w^ho harkened there would fain 
Have suffered any grievous pain 
Rather than hear such wail again. 
Next, checking suddenly her moan, 
She stooped to search if life were flown ; 
Then turned her eyes from left to right 
To find the victor of the fight. 
She fixed him with a settled stare, 
A stony gaze of stark despair ; 
But not another cry was heard, 
No mourning nor beseeching word. 
She only raised a shaking hand 
And pointed to the stranger's brand; 
Then drew a finger 'cross her throat, 
And made a sign as though she smote ; 
Submissive, mute, before her foe 
And craving death to end her woe. 

Our hero gazed, right sore amazed 
To see this sylvan creature crazed, 
And find that he had thrust the dart 
Of battle through a woman's heart. 
He held himself a hardened soul. 
Inured to warfare's bloody dole ; 
But all at once he felt a meek 
Compassion stealing down his cheek. 
He turned away in wild remorse; 
Without a word he mounted horse; 



46 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

He fled the living and the dead ; 
Without a backward glance he fled : 
He fled as fast as he could flee, 
In horror of his victory. 



XXV 

But men must work though women greet, 
And surely war is labor meet 
For brawny heroes fit to save 
Their native land from gyve and glaive. 
Our chief felt higher duties draw 
Than comforting a widowed squaw; 
He had a valiant foe to smite, 
A vanished child to bring to light. 

So, wheeling wide through leafy lands, 
He overpassed the scarlet bands, 
Nor halted till he saw, before, 
The dunes of Narragansett shore, 
And, far behind, the alien hive 
He meant to slay or take alive. 
This done, he scoured the lanskip round 
To find a friendly battle-ground. 
And, searching wisely, reached a place 
Where Britain's ranks would end their race. 
If martial lore or Yankee trick 
Could make them charge at double-quick. 

Anon the red battalions spied 
This lonely horseman riding wide. 
And, doubting rustic ambuscade, 
Deployed their mass in grim parade. 



THE GENTLE EARL. 1 4/ 



But there remained, a torpid swarm, 
Nor dared begin the battle's storm, 
Because their chief had faced about 
And sped a-rear on secret scout. 



XXVT 

"I thought," our Yankee Caesar writ, 
''They didn't mean to come to battle ; 
An' so I slunk ahead a bit 
To shake 'em up an' make 'em rattle. 
Besides, I had my ambush sot. 
An' couldn't let the joke miscarry. 
Because I thought as like as not 
'Twould send 'em all to Ancient Harry. 

"I took a canter down the van, 
An' squinted 'round, an' looked 'em over. 
The grenadiers were spick-an-span 
In uniforms as fresh as clover; 
With streaks of powder down the locks 
An' queues a-sawin' crost the collar, 
An' eyes a-pop because their stocks 
Were tighter than would let 'em swaller 
All standin' stiff at shoulder-whoop, 
Their eyes a-front an' toes a-kimber. 
Without a slouch in all the troop, 
A solid lot of fightin' timber. 
The tories filled the hinder rows, 
A helter-skelter lot of skinners. 
Exactly fit to frighten crows. 
Or plunder pickaninnies' dinners. 



148 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

"Well purty soon they reckonized 
My uniform, or else my figger, 
An' looked a leetle mite surprised, 
But didn't charge nor pull a trigger. 
So thereupon I made a speech. 
Though not a talkin' son of thunder; 
I told 'em they would never reach 
Their port, an' might as well knock under. 
I guess it got 'em hoppin' mad ; 
For officers begun to clatter 
Around ; an' next the drummers had 
A lively hint to start their batter. 

XXVII 

"Then came a roar of British cheers, 
Half spiled by Tory yelps an' screamin', 
An' then the British grenadiers, 
Full trot, with baggonets a-gleamin. 
Of course I let 'em seem to beat 
At first, to make 'em spry an' bolder, 
An' sorter fetched a sham retreat, 
Jest keepin' watch acrost my shoulder. 
I tell ye 'twas a splendid sight 
To see the Johnny Bulls a-comin'. 
Their ranks in line, their muskets bright, 
Their chubby faces full of fight, 
Their colors flyin', drummers drummin'. 
At last I reached the very spot 
Whereon I'd figured out to flail 'em. 
They still a-chargin', pipin' hot. 
An' bawlin' like the ass of Baalam. 



THE GENTLE EARL. 1 49 

''There was a slantin pressapace 
Ten times as high as Shiloh steeple, 
With zigzag steps adown the face, 
Dug out, I spose, by neighbor people. 
I jumped the humpty dumpty brink, 
An' bumpety-bumpt from top to bottom, 
A-laughin' all the way to think 
How sure an' sartinly I'd got 'em. 
An' so I had ; adown the cliff 
They fluttered after their bellwether, 
Hell-bent, but sojer-like an stiff, 
With gaiters swingin' all together. 
Of course they perished there an' then, 
The very thing on which I reckoned ; 
I jedge about two thousen' men 
Were smashed to jell in half a second. 
It was the most decisive squabble 
I ever finished single-handed ; 
It made the British army hobble 
From Newport Island, half disbanded." 



XXVIII 

If any wight thus far believes 
The marvels writ in Downing's leaves, 
I hold his credence will not fail 
For what remaineth of the tale. 
Although it soundeth wondrous like 
The yarns a tarry marlinspike 
Unfolds to open-mouthed marines 
Or vounkers fresh from harvest scenes. 



50 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

You all remember how the earl 
Who loved our gracious Yankee girl 
Had tidings from a Tory hound 
Of Downing fast asleep and bound. 
By ]\Iagog! what a thrill of joy 
Bestirred this knightly-minded boy ! 
He saw a glorious chance to bring 
Unmeasured good to land and king, 
And win perchance. — But who could tell 
If man might win such damozel? 
So, bidding Esther, Fare-you-well, 
He rode with all his trooper race 
To save her sire from evil case 
And earn for both the royal grace. 



XXIX 

Through woodland wide the lover hied 
As merrily as man may ride. 
And reached in middle afternoon 
The spot where Downing rivalled Boone; 
But only found a bloody brave, 
A squaw who delved a warrior's grave, 
An infant giggling 'neath the copse 
And broken bonds and shattered hopes. 

Then, grieving o'er his fruitless quest, 
He scouted leafy vale and crest 
Till evening poured her dusky files 
Through silent glades and rustling aisles. 
And filled the wold with cheating shades. 
The paths with seeming ambuscades. 



THE GENTLE EARL. I5I 

At last he knew his errand vain, 
And, turning rein, he sought amain 
His captive maid and footmen train. 

But where were they, and where w^as he ? 
He reached the spot where they should be ; 
He reached it many times that night ; 
Then sought anew till morning light, 
A sore bewildered, woful wight; 
For every now and then there came 
Athwart the gloom a spit of flame. 
And then he heard a hissing ball, 
A dying groan, a heavy fall ; 
And so his troopers one by one 
Fell out until he rode alone. 

Ah ! horrible it was to hear 
Death treading on his steps so near, 
Nor ever win the piteous grace 
To front the monster's savage face. 
And fall as gallant men desire 
With bloody sabre glinting fire. 
Ah ! horrible to feel at last 
The cruel bullet driven fast 
Through palpitating flesh and thought. 
And conscious life return to naught. 



XXX 

The morning wrestled with the moon 
Before he wakened from his swoon, 
And thought it slumber, but again 
Remembered all his troopers slain. 



152 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

And found his breath a feeble sigh, 
And knew himself anear to die. 

A moment's prayer ; again he drowsed, 
Or fainted ; but anon he roused 
Because a shadow veiled the skies ; 
And, lifting up his glassy eyes. 
He saw a giant-moulded man, 
Of rustic visage dark with tan. 
Attired in careless martial gear, 
Who knelt and murmured words of cheer. 

He knew the bony face and frame ; 
He knew the man ; he called his name. 
He whispered low with painful breath 
His love, triumphant over death. 
He sighed, "I saved her; is she dead?" 
And hearing, "No," was comforted. 

Then came a change upon his face, 
A thankful, gladdened, yearning grace, 
A look that told of saintly sights 
Suddenly seen through morning's lights. 
So, gripping fast the foeman's palm, 
As though he found its touch a balm, 
He died, forgiving, loving, meek, 
With Downing's tears upon his cheek. 



XXXI 

They folded him in Shiloh earth. 
Not many steps from Downing's hearth. 
Yet never might the father tell 
His gentle child how passing well 



THE GENTLE EARL. I 53 



That stranger loved her during Hfe, 
Nor who had smitten him in strife. 
vSo, often did the maid recall 
The lowly knoll and grassy pall, 
And glide w^ithin the churchyard gate 
To gaze thereon compassionate, 
Yet never knew she stood above 
A heart that gave her all its love. 
And never heard those pulses stir 
That beat for her and ceased for her. 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE 



IV 
THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE 



Hurrah for Downing ! He had done 
Such doughty deeds that Freedom's sun 
Had often paused in middle sky 
To hear his fearful charging cry, 
And rushed through many a sleepless night 
To see the morn's appointed fight. 

Alone our rustic Joshua fought, 
Yet such deliverance had wrought 
That all New England's sacred coasts 
Were clear of Tories, save as ghosts, 
While Britons, Hessians, Mingos, witches 
Had fled, or filled their final ditches. 

In short, the Downcast land was freed 
From tyrant's breed and Tophet's creed; 
And every Yankee man might raise 
His garden-sauce and hymns of praise. 
Nor fear lest Tories, sly as moles. 
Should hack his independence poles ; 
Lest purchased bravos, foreign-born. 
Should cut his throat and purse and corn; 
Lest wizard pinches, pricks and beatings 
Should interrupt his evening meetings. 



158 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

II 

But Downing might not cease his labor, 
Nor even wipe his bloody sabre 
While foeman trampled any tittle 
Of earth where humans guess and whittle. 
How could he think of crops and cattle, 
How think of anything but battle, 
While demon-fleets in weird processions 
Imported hordes of Belial's Hessians 
To captivate and slay his fellows 
Beyond the Hudson's crystal billows, 
Or sleep their beery sleep and fatten 
Upon the sacred isle, Manhattan? 

Thus roused to fury, Downing thundered 
Such words that even Shiloh wondered, 
And feared lest toils too elephantic 
Had driven the Yankee Sampson frantic. 

"I'll build," he roared with indignation, 
*'A fleet to save our chosen nation; 
I'll cruise about the briny surges 
In spite of Guildhall's demiurges;"^ 
I'll harry all the tarnal regions 
That breed the sassage-eating legions. 
And drive Apollyon's self to wrestle 
Like mad to save his Hesse Cassel." 



Ill 

So, grinding axe and chisel bright. 
And felling trees o'er hill and dale, 

*Gog and Magog. 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. I 59 

He joinered out with Yankee sleight 
A squadron of a single sail 
About as terrible to meet 
As Jefferson's mosquito fleet. 

But like ingenious Crusoe, he 
Forgot that seamen need the sea, 
And built his ocean-scourge at home, 
A score of miles from ocean's foam, 
Where certainly she never struck 
Her flag to foeman's better luck. 
But also never shone in fray. 
Nor ever made a knot a day ; 
For even clippers cannot travel 
A sheet of cobblestone and gravel. 

But genius finds all things a school. 
And learns from errors how to rule. 
Our skipper's purpose faltered not 
Because he failed to sail a lot. 
He saw that he must seek the main, 
Or launch his navies all in vain; 
That nothing short of ocean's roar 
Would answer for a commodore. 

Instructed thus, he climbed astride 
Flis 'horse, as country vikings ride. 
And journeyed south a summer *day. 
Enquiring all the drouthy way 
If any seaport, wharf or pier 
Existed near the vasty mere. 
And also where a Whiggish grip 
Might clapperclaw a Tory ship. 



l60 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 



IV 

At last he spied a glorious sight, 
The blue Atlantic, jeweled bright 
With countless ripples, shining keen 
As facets graved in tourmaline ; 
And just below the bowldered hill 
Whereon he paused to gaze his fill, 
He found the very thing he lacked 
To be an ocean god in fact. 

Beside the drowsy, nodding sedge 
That rimmed a tiny haven's edge, 
Where baby billows romped and laughed 
As though their feather-heads were daft. 
He found a jaunty coasting craft, 
(At anchor, though with canvas spread,) 
Which had a mast and figure-head 
And boom and rudder, like the one 
Himself had built a month agone; 
Whereat he thanked the kindly skies 
And claimed the sloop as lawful prize. 

Some thieving tories lurked aboard 
Who promptly died by Freedom's sword, 
For vagabonds of traitor kind 
Were not a whit tO' Downing's mind, 
And rarely fled his noble hate 
Withouten loss of limb or pate. 
As crabs escape from mortal rout 
Because their legs and tails pull out. 

The skirmish done, the pirates slain, 
Our chieftain snapped the anchor chain 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. l6l 

And turned without a change of face 
To challenge Fortune's weird embrace. 
He turned his back on natal shore 
And all the life he lived before. 
Alone he dared the protean sea ; 
Alone, yet confident that he 
\\'ould surely reach the other beach 
And spoil the men of Teuton speech, 
And make their Thor and Odin flee. 



But eftersoon, beneath his feet, 
He heard a sharp refrain of greet. 
And then he thought the plaining tone 
Was like his darling Esther's own. 
The voice to him of sweetest sound 
In all our fallen planet's round. 

He leaped below; he found her there 
Begirt with many a link and snare. 
So bound by that piratic crew 
Whose blood besmirched the rearward blue. 
He snapped her bonds like brittle glass, 
Or tender withes of summer grass, 
And might have bursted them the same, 
No matter what their stuff and frame; 
For wondrous wight was he in might 
As any giant fame can cite, 
Far huskier than men we raise 
In these degenerate, mawkish days 
When philanthropic frenzy saves 



1 62 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Unworthy types from clement graves, 
And holds in mischievous subjection 
The law of natural selection. 



VI 

A thrilling tale the daughter told, 
Right strange to folk of modern mould, 
Though like adventures often came 
To gracious maids of Grecian name, 
To Andromeda by the shore. 
To Proserpine and many more. 

She walked at eve a lonely wood, 
Reciting hymns in dreamy mood. 
And watching rapt the boreal lights 
That filled the hollow sky with flights 
Of saintly ghosts in bright attire. 
Ascending swift on wings of fire ; 
When all at once the glory died 
And shudders through the forest sighed, 
And crickets hushed their cheery shout, 
And fireflies put their lanterns out, 
As though a mighty fiend drew near 
Who draped efi:ulgent night in fear. 

Then overhead the branches clove, 
And through the trembling shadows drove 
A sombre form without a form, 
No doubt a wraith of night and storm. 
Who lifted her on gloomy plumes 
Athwart the evening's ghostly brumes 
O'er glinting lake and woodland brown 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 1 63 

And frowning crag and glimmering town, 
To leave her captivate with those 
Who lately fell by Downing's blows. 
Which tale her father never doubted, 
Because, although his arm had routed 
The wizard hordes and goblin legions 
In manifold New England regions. 
He knew a fiendish remnant scouted 
From point to point as Satan's skinners 
To plague the saints and help the sinners. 



VII 

Rejoiced to meet his child again 
And break anew ApoUyon's chain, 
Our commodore pursued his cruise 
And found no little to amuse 
A Yankee fond of information 
Who loved to study all creation. 

Around him, thick and tame as sheep, 
Appeared the wonders of the deep; 
Sea-serpents two miles long, or more, 
(For Downing often called it four). 
Reefs overrun with ocean maids 
(Who sang, of course, and twined their braids), 
Leviathans, behemoths, whales. 
And bugling tritons dressed in scales ; 
While, far aloft, flew deadlier forms. 
Foreboding wrack of wheeling storms ; 
For now a wizard, now a wraith, 
(If Downing's tale deserves our faith) 



164 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Shot swiftly o'er the frighted seas 
With angry hum hke bumblebees, 
The messengers of George's rage 
To Arnold, Clinton, Howe and Gage. 
Alas that Downing failed to smite 
These caitiffs in their eldritch flight, 
For, peering through their skinny claws. 
They spied the Thor of freedom's cause 
And guessed aright his daring plan 
To martellate the Hessian clan. 
So, spurring goat and cat and broom. 
They bustled on through sheen and gloom 
To Arnold, famed and mighty traitor. 
Their evil commonwealth's dictator, 
And brought him word of Downing's antic 
Attempt to cross the fierce Atlantic. 



VIII 

As awful lords of Gaza jeered 
And winked the eye and wagged the beard. 
When Sampson stood within their fane, 
His tresses shorn, his valor vain. 
So Arnold scoffed in wicked sport 
To hear the warlock crew's report. 
Because he thought New England's knight 
Had surely fought his final fight. 

But Arnold was a soul of power 
Who might not waste a golden hour 
In counting chickens yet unhatched, 
Or scalping foemen not despatched. 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 165 

At once he launched his wizard swarm 
To seek the dervish fiends of storm, 
And bid them maul that daring yawl 
With crashing wave and hissing squall. 

Eftsoon the ocean imps collected 
And wrought as Arnold's trolls directed, 
On windy circles fiercely wheeling. 
Forever tow'rd the centre stealing, 
Arousing, lifting, driving ocean 
In clashing bursts of mad commotion, 
A screaming whirl of monstrous revels, 
The cvclone-dance, the dance of devils. 



IX 

It was as though a second birth 
Of demonkind had come on earth, 
Such mongrel, goblin clamors rose, 
Such roar of ragings, wail of woes : 
Insane blasphemings, madder prayers 
Infernal paeans, fierce despairs ; 
Derisive laughters, bacchant yells ; 
Exultings of triumphant hells : 
Defiances of crests to crests ; 
Appeals for mercy, hoarse behests ; 
Laments of monstrous agonies ; 
Huzzas of vast debaucheries ; 
Refrains that ever seemed to weep ; 
Responsive snarls of Titan sleep ; 
Mad dialogues of surge with surge. 
Half heard athwart a booming dirge : 



1 66 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Extatic bellows from abysses, 
Commixed with groaning ; snaky hisses ; 
Discordant babblings ; senseless bleats 
Of griffins ; hoots of crazed afreets ; 
Mysterious sentences, half spoken; 
Weird oracles in accents broken; 
A Cosmos shouting without thought; 
Replies of Chaos, meaning naught ; 
The brutish language of the great 
Sea-furies inarticulate ; 
The strivings of the Deep to reach 
Some anthropoid, or devilish speech. 



But, wild as that alarum was, 
The sight surpassed ; without a pause 
The tempest-imps tore ocean's face 
To flying tatters frail as lace; 
Like hounds they leaped upon their prey 
And scattered it in clots of spray. 
The billows reeled before their wrath ; 
The surges cringed ; the cyclone's path 
Was over dinted helms of waves 
That stooped away like beaten slaves ; 
It hurled them tumbling, groveling, prone 
It trampled them ; it reigned alone. 

The ocean's visage altered ; spells. 
Mutations, marvels, miracles 
Succeeded swift ; at every glance 
It changed its awful countenance. 
No breaker wallowed there but bore 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 167 

Marmorean streaks and dapplings hoar, 

With whirlpools twirling up and down 

From yeasty base to feathery crown ; 

While fierce explosions, far below, 

Uplifted floods of indigo. 

One moment glassy, dark and cool 

As any forest-bowered pool ; 

Then swiftly folded, wrinkled, curled. 

And gone forever from the world. 

But mainly ail was sheeted white. 
The azure quailed ; a dazzling flight 
And flood of lather oversloughed 
The billows with a ghastly shroud ; 
And underneath the pallor rolled 
Insensate monsters manifold ; 
Though, scarcely dead, they rose apace 
And trampled out their breathless race. 
Anear, or yonder, drove serene, 
Resplendant slopes of crystal green, 
That seemed as hard as mountain-pent. 
But ere another glance were rent 
To utter froth, and then again 
Arose and speeded o'er the main. 

Tiara'd breakers glinted by. 
Like charging Titans ; then a cry, 
A snarling, hissing, strangled breath 
Of agony, announced their death. 
But ere they vanished, others stood 
Above them ; that Antaean brood 
Renewed from every fall the strife ; 
A ceaseless death fed ceaseless life. 



1 68 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 



XI 



Man seemed an atom here. His power 
To nothing turned in ocean's hour 
Of wrath and rule. That slender bark, 
Of late so like a skimming lark. 
Was soon a mastless, drifting wreck 
And barely showed its writhing deck 
Above the flaked and sheeted spume, 
That flashed like Death's eternal plume. 

It struggled not ; its strength was done ; 
It had the fainting lurch of one 
Who reels through lines of smiting foes 
Half conscious of their jeers and blows. 
The billows, watchful, swift of spring, 
Pursued with hate this helpless thing, 
Attending it as painted braves 
Hunt bleeding prisoners to graves. 

Titanic sea-gods jostled it; 
Demonic, scoffing muzzles spit 
Against it ere they hurtled past ; 
Unshapely, wallowing monsters massed 
Their quivering bulks to overturn ; 
Above the prow, above the stern, 
Chimaeras, dropping clots of foam 
Gnashed threat'nings ; watery imp and gnome 
Waved hatred while they struggled by 
From hither to the further sky ; 
In all the reeling, howling flight 
No pity sounded ; naught but spite. 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 1 69 

XII 

So morning went, and afternoon. 
And night withouten star or moon ; 
So likewise all the morrow passed, 
'Mid hissing spray and screaming blast. 

But when a second sunset fired 
Its western altar, greatly tired 
The wind-enchanters seemed to be, 
And smoothness slid along the sea. 
The rushing, rocking, toppling peaks. 
The watery snarls, the windy shrieks, 
The cyclop anarchy of ocean 
Subsided, failed in voice and motion, 
Till mellow twilight's dwindling bounds 
Revealed but rounded azure mounds, 
Atlantic prairies rolling wide 
Their gleamy downs through eventide. 

And now our castaways might sleep, 
As men have slumbered on the deep 
Who knew not whether morning's light 
Awaited them, or endless night. 
They slept, but not without a word 
Of prayer from Esther; was it heard? 
Perchance, for when she oped her eyes 
She lived and saw the blessed skies. 
The night had vanished ; morning shone ; 
Her father lived ; she lieard his tone. 
And marveled why he talked alone. 

/\gain she would have drowsed away, 
But presently she heard him say, 



I/O THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Disjointed words of marveling, 
As one who spies a wondrous thing. 
In Yankee dialect he spake, 
And thus she heard him, half awake. 

''Am I alive, or dead as Cyrus? 
Is that a ship of ancient Tyrus ? 
Or have the Hindoos took a notion 
To scoot in temples round the ocean?" 



XIII 

She leaped a-foot ; she reached his side ; 
She glanced along the kindling tide; 
And there, beneath the gracious dawn 
That draped the east with rosy lawn. 
She saw a weirder spectacle 
Than ever wizard wrought by spell. 
Did necromancy rule the deep? 
Had cycles vanished with her sleep ? 
Had future centuries arisen. 
Or aeons dead escaped their prison? 
Was time a chaos ? Were the ages 
Commixed like haply gathered pages? 

A furlong off, beneath the lea, 
Slow-heaving o'er the heaving sea, 
Advanced beneath the orient blaze 
A galleon of ancient days ; 
A vessel such as Hollat^d hands 
Outfitted when Columbian lands 
W\"re leafy wilds where beasts and men 
Held daily strife for food and den ; 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. I /I 

A craft like those ye now behold 
111 tapestries bedimmed with mould, 
Or tomes that tell of customs dead, 
Or vagrom dreams of painter's head. 
Yet, while so fabulous in guise. 
She lumbered there to mortal eyes 
As real a ship as ever tacked, 
A solid bulk, an oaken fact. 



XIV 

Yea more ; she seemed a ship of might 
Her tops were turrets, pierced for fight ; 
Her stem and stern like castles towered ; 
Along her bulwark cannon lowered ; 
While cutlass, pike and arquebuse 
Were ranged amidst for boarding use. 

Her folk were many ; all along 
The forward railing leaned a throng 
Of mariners ; and others bowed 
From dizzy top and yard and shroud ; 
All gazing gravely on the wreck 
With settled face and craning neck, 
The stoniest crew of men that e'er 
Did stare athwart an earthly mere. 
And every speechless gazer bore 
Such garb as Holland used of yore ; 
Broad-leafed hats with pointed peaks. 
High-colored doublets, ample breeks. 
With shoulder-piece, or morion. 
Or breastplate glinting back the sun ; 



172 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

All quaint as maskers at a ball, 
Or mummers ruffed for carnival, 
Or waxen mannikins that show 
The raimentings of long ago. 

Yet these were but a common brood. 
Upon the quarter-castle stood 
A group of three, in velvet clad, 
Who nodded ostrich plumes, and had 
A noble port of haught command, 
Like lordly men of knightly land. 
Of these the tallest lifted head, 
And skyward gazed as though he said 
A word of thankfulness or prayer; 
Then, turning tow'rd our Yankee pair, 
Extended hand, and mutely gave 
Assurance that he came to save. 



XV 

Thereon did puzzled Downing stammer 
His wonderment in Shiloh grammar. 

"May I be tomahawked," he blurted, 
'Tf Satan's kingdom aint converted ! 
I've offen heerd of hell a-fioatin', 
An' didn't bleeve in no sich boatin' ; 
But here it comes as plain as blazes, 
A-sayin' prayers an' singin' praises. 
For either Downing's lost his reason, 
An' needs confinement for a season. 
Or we behold that fiendish notion. 
The Flyin' Dutchman — plague of ocean — 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 1 73 

Who allays keeps a-sailin'-sailin', 
To pick the puss of trade an' whalin. 

"But now, it seems, his will an' inwards 
Incline no longer, hell-an-sinwards, 
If one can jedge a feller's goin' 
By pleasant ways an' pious showin'. 
So let us hope the spangled creetur 
Will pitch his hymn to shortish metre 
An' launch his wherry hurry-scurry 
To snake us out of wet an' worry. 
If not, I doubt his whole profession 
An' count him nawthin' but a Hessian, 
For gospel talk withouten kindness 
Is ruther wuss than pagan blindness 
An' fetches neither scrapes nor thankys 
From native-born, enlightened Yankees." 



XVI 

Erelong a jollyboat was lowered 
Beneath the stranger's quarterboard, 
A portly craft of heavy jowl, 
Exceeding like the famous bowl 
Wherein the trustful Gotham sages 
Went grandly down to future ages. 

Next Downing spied four sailors glide 
Aslant the galleon's bellied side. 
And after them the lordly chief 
Who lately signalled him relief; 
Then saw them feather oars and urge 
Their rolling shallop o'er the surge 



1/4 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Until it smote his sunken rail, 
No ghostly bark of vapors pale, 
But stiff with oak and clinker mail. 

No phantoms, either, were the rowers, 
But stalwart as their ashen oars ; 
And he who bore the ostrich plume 
Had surely never known the tomb ; 
For, leaping to the wreck, he strode 
With sounding steps in mortal mode. 

A man he was, in blood and bone ; 
A very man, right nobly grown ; 
His visage flushed with younker health; 
His glances azure ; while a wealth 
Of curling sunshine overhung 
His ivory brow and signed him young. 



XVII 

A man he truly seemed ; and yet 
Some awful variance was set 
Betwixt this man and other men, 
The gladsome folk we daily ken. 
You might have fancied him a soul 
From distant stellar realms of dole 
Who never happed before on earth, 
Nor heard of Bethlem's wondrous birth ; 
For utter sorrow brimmed his eyes 
And choked his breath with many sighs. 
As though he knew the wrath to come. 
But knew not how to fly therefrom. 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 1/5 

Moreover, man is rarely seen 
So strangely meek in act and mien ; 
For, baring solemnly his head. 
He knelt and humbly pressed his red 
And comely mouth against the deck; 
And many times he kissed the wreck 
With choking sobs and whisperings 
Of incommunicable things ; 
As one who, chancing on the spot, 
Where erst he aimed a mortal shot. 
May kneel above the hidden corse 
In sudden pang of hot remorse, 
And swear repentance there of crime 
xA.nd holier life for coming time. 

At last he rose with calmer face. 
As though a messenger of grace 
Had swiftly flown from mercy's throne 
With pardoning answer to his moan. 
Then, turning tow'rd our castaways, 
Who stared the while in dumb amaze, 
He bent his lips to Esther's wrist. 
Then likewise kist her father's fist. 
The meekest wight that ever laid 
A kiss on hand of man or maid. 



XVIII 

Such courtesy did much surprise 
A Downing reared in rustic guise. 
He never saw the like before. 
Nor heard thereof in days of yore. 



\j6 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

So, partly awed, yet more perplexed 
And ill at ease, and therefore vexed. 
He glumly said, "My christian brother, 
Your meaning's dark, an' seems to me 
We'd sooner understand each other 
If we should let the bussing be. 
Dessay there's fun in scrapes an' kisses 
To them that's broughten up to pass 
Their extry hours, like city misses, 
A-smirkin 'fore a lookin-glass. 
But Goodness didn't light our tapers 
In deestricks given to monkey-capers. 
An' we admire these fancy manners 
As much as Satan does hosanners. 

''So, waivin' furder bows an' curchies, 
Explain with no uncertain sound 
Whether your ark a fort or church is 
An' what you mean by droppin' round. 
But while you're thinkin' up your answer 
I'll briefly state that I'm a man, sir. 
Disposed to be almighty tender 
About the p'int of no-surrender." 



XIX 

The stranger started, not in spite, 
But marvel mixed with sharp delight, 
Like one who wins a pard'ning word 
Instead of mortal thrust incurred. 

Then, taking DoAvning's hand, he said, 
'T trow that thou art EnHish bred. 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 1 7/ 

Thank God that I may hear agen 
The blessid speech of hving men ! 
Thank God that men without a curse 
May welcome me, so long perverse, 
The slave of sin for many a year. 
The haunting fiend of many a mere !" 

This utterance of gladness rung 
In syllables of English tongue. 
But English other than we know, 
A mother-speech of yore-ago. 
The tones were sweet. But strangely old 
They seemed, as though the funeral mould 
Of centuries had gathered round 
The words. They had a ghostly sound 
That brought to mind the eldritch lay 
And requiem of ivies gray. 
Lamenting o'er a riven keep 
Whose knights are dust, whose bugles sleep. 

At first the sense was dimly marked; 
But presently, as Downing harked 
And fiercely strove to comprehend. 
He saw a beam of meaning wend 
Its way along the words ; and soon 
The purport sparkled clear as noon; 
Although the wight who understood 
Deemed it patter of alien brood ; 
Nor guessed that thus his fathers spake, 
Nor quite believed himself awake. 

As one can hear discourse in sleep 
That moveth him to curse and weep. 
Yet cannot answer, though he sighs 



1^8 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

And grimaces to mouth replies, 

So Downing heard his fearful guest 

With palsied tongue and heaving breast ; 

And when the Flying Dutchman bade 

Our Yankees follow, they obeyed 

And eftersoon set foot upon 

That ever-cruising galleon, 

The weirdest visit, I opine. 

That ever was on turf or brine. 



XX 

Our chief, in column after column 
Of what he calls his Seckont VoUum, 
Relates such brags anent this galley 
That skeptic spirits dare to rally 
The wonder-tale as merely fable, 
A crumb purloined from Arthur's Table. 
But Downing's self and Downing's labors 
Are testified by trusty neighbors. 
By men who sate in deacon's places, 
Distinguished for their gifts and graces, 
Their scholarship in orthodoxies 
And zeal with contribution boxes; 
And we, who take their witness kindly, 
Believe his blague and quote it blindly. 

"She was," he writes, "the queerest notion 
That ever wabbled round the ocean; 
The awkardest sea-goin' creetur 
Sence Pharaoh an' Simon Peter. 
The stern an' fokesle histed uppards 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 1 79 

Consid'able like mons'ous cuppards, 

In consequence of which her figger 

Was Hke a crescent moon, though bigger. 

She kerried every kind of wep'm 

That Granther Noah took as kep'm, 

From Tubal Cain's harpoons an' hammers 

To muskets made by Amsterdammers, 

With cannons built of wroughten metal 

No thicker than a potash kettle, 

A sight more suitable for bustin' 

Than givin enemies a dustin'." 

XXI 

"But sartinly the strangest show 
Aboard was officers an' sailors, 
A gang of younkers.all aglow, 
But dressed by dead an' buried tailors. 
They had a far-off, hopeful gaze. 
Reminding me of Eden's glory. 
Or, ruther more, of pious ways 
That lead to Heaven's upper story; 
Besides, they had a gentle sadness, 
A-glimpsin' through a trustin' gladness, 
A gleam of meek an' patient graces 
We off en see on corpses' faces ; 
By which, though not a holy liver, 
I found it easy to diskiver 
The creeturs were in great affliction 
An' labored under deep conviction, 
Yet entertained a hope to die on 
The steep an' narrow road to Zion. 



l80 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

"Well, trompin' on the skipper's shadder, 
We ambled down the cabin ladder 
An' found a gorgis-lookin' chimber, 
All carpentered in whittled timber, 
A dozen paces square by measure 
An' bilin' over full of treasure ; 
For instance, cuppards, chists an' tables 
Of ivory an' fragrant lumbers. 
As fine as dreams in schoolboy slumbers. 
Or what we hear about in fables ; 
With trinkets thick as Jews in Numbers, — 
Tyaries, bracelets, silver flagons, 
Gold-mounted gods an' jeweled dragons. 



XXII 

"An' right among the raree-shows, 
Two youngling men an' one young woman, 
(Arrayed in go-to-meetin' close). 
So hansome they were skussly human ; 
The Flyin' Dutchman's near relations. 
Who shooken hands an' offered cheers 
With such a buzz of salutations 
As ruther stumped our Yankee ears. 

The christenins were Dutch to me. 
An' drefful tough to spell, I reckon. 
The skipper interduced ; says he, 
'My name is Hendrick Vanderdecken ; 
My cousins are these other two ; 
The first is Dircksen Vanderdryfe ; 
The other, Arendt Vanderloo, 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. l8l 

And this, Cornelie, is his wifey.' — 

Or so I understood the titles, 

Although, perhaps, I've missed the spellin' ; 

For Dutch is spoken from the vitals 

An' hard to write bevond all tellin.' " 



XXIII 

Thus Downing found himself the guest 
Of ocean's wanderer and pest. 
The fated guide of murderous waves, 
The haunting ghoul of coraled graves. 

High dialogue the strangers held, 
As suited men of hoary eld. 
Of that ennobled age they spoke 
When all Iberia's empire broke 
In floods of steel on Holland's shore, 
And backward rolled, a flood of gore; 
When Orange cheered the slender band 
That stood for freedom, faith and land. 
And cumbered breach and field and sea 
With dead who left their country free ; 
When martyred cities, clothed in fire, 
Saw victory's crown above the pyre; 
And vam was Parma's wondrous art, 
And vainly burst Don Juan's heart. 

For long our hero speechless heard, 
With mouth agape like youngling bird. 
Debating how such lordly names 
And gallant deeds and shining fames 
Could be no less unknown to him 



1 82 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Than things beyond creation's brim. 
At last he stammered, musing much, 
'T reckon those were ancient Dutch ; 
An' though I'm but a niiddhn' schollard 
In history, I think I know, 
For sartin sure, the graveyard swaller'd 
Their strength an' glory long ago ; 
For Holland's sign come down a story 
When Britain took to keepin' tavern,"^' 
An' Spain has got as weak an' hoary 
As giant Pope in Bunyan's cavern. 
So, on the whole an' 'barrin' errors, 
I ruther guess those famous coots 
Charged bagnets on the king of terrors 
An' died, like sojers, in their boots." 

XXIV 

Then golden-haired Cornelie cried, 
''Alas ! it may be all have died. 
But all? Do all my kinsmen sleep? 
The little ones who scarce could creep? 
My brother Vv^ith the flaxen head ? 
How may it be that all are dead?" 

Then Esther, witnessing her grief, 
And knowing naught could bring relief, 
Inclined her brow and sobbed aloud. 
While valiant Downing also bowed 
To hide the burning drops that ran 

* In New England the place of taverner was formerly 
held by town authority, and was a position of trust and 
honor. 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 1 83 

Adown his cheek of rugged tan. 

For, stalwart though he was, and grim 

To hardnesses that touched but him. 

He might not spy distress anear 

Nor see his daughter shed a tear, 

But sympathy would smite him through, 

And he would weep, as angels do. 

Meanwhile the others held askance 
With folded arms and lowered glance. 
Unflinching shapes of calm despair. 
Without a tear, without a prayer. 
As kenning well that no lament 
Nor plea would ease their punishment. 

But shortly Vanderdecken gave 
This comment, "Welcome be the grave !" 

Then Vanderloo besought: ''My own. 
My sweet Cornelie, cease thy moan ! 
Thy kin have bowed to God's decree; 
Long since they crossed the Shining Sea. 
Gone are the children, like their games ; 
Forgot, perchance, their very names. 
Yet, dearest one, take heart of grace, 
For they will meet us face to face, 
Will meet and greet us when our feet 
Find rest before the mercy-seat." 

XXV 

"Yea," Vanderdecken sighed. "We know 
The truth, at last. And be it so!" 

Then, turning to his guests, he said, 
"Two hundred stormy years have sped 



184 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

About this world of weary wail 
Since we loosened the homeward sail ; 
Yet still we plough a shoreless foam, 
And still we cannot find our home. 
Ye marvel such a thing can be. 
But hearken ! listen ! hear ! and ye 
Shall know how God can discipline, 
How swift his anger follows sin. 

I was distract with love of gold, , 

And like Iscariot I sold 
My peace, my happiness, myself. 
My fellow men, my God, for pelf. 
I was distract for it because 
It makes and shatters human laws ; 
Because it gives one lordly place 
And lordly powder among his race; 
Because it makes one like a king. 
Wherever shone the eldritch thing 
I hasted there with deadly sword. 
Or deadlier guile, to swell my hoard, 
Nor cared though tears and blood bestained 
The sheen of every sequin gained. 

But oftentimes, from year to year. 
Unearthly whispers reached my ear. 
Fell tenderly through starlit calms. 
Or noontides breathing spice and balms. 
Slid weirdly over burnished seas, 
Where nothing was, nor ship nor breeze, 
So weirdly came, so weirdly fled, 
I looked to see the misty dead. 
And what the whisper sighed was this : 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 1 85 

'Thoii sellest thine eternal bliss ; 
Erelong wilt thou be called again 
To choose betwixt thy God and gain ; 
Then, turning still from ways of worth, 
Thy doom shall wouderstrike the earth.' 



XXVI 

''Yet none the less — O heart of flint! 
I gathered gold withouten stint. 
Nor paused amid my vampyre chase, 
Nor ceased to scorn the heavenly grace, 
And like myself I made the men 
Who share my fortune now as then. 

This galley freighted we with groans 
And bloody tears of Indian zones, 
Transformed by cruelty and lies 
To jewels, gold and merchandise. 
Then, hoping greater gain if we 
Might quickly overspan the sea, 
I swore that neither love, nor fear, 
Nor law divine, nor human tear 
Should make me slacken sail or veer 
In all my voyage. Demon oath ! 
Fulfilled with more than demon troth, 
And punished by the watchful power 
Of Him who knows the sparrow's hour. 

Upon the hundreth prosperous day 
We bellied swift along our way. 
Dividing Holland seas at last 
And vaunting over perils past; 



1 86 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Upon that gracious day, as morn 
Shook over earth her golden horn, 
Enriching all the east with skies 
That fitter seemed for Paradise ; 
Upon that gracious morn we spied, 
A furlong from our hissing side, 
A wreck that wallowed deadly deep, 
Whereon a castaway did weep 
And wring his hands athwart the wave, 
Beseeching us to pause and save. 



XXVII 

''Cornelie, then, my cousin's wife. 
Made intercession for that life 
With such a piercing woman-wail 
That all who harkened turned a-pale 
And stared askant with sullen brow. 
And muttered, 'Will he break the vow?' 
For every heart was hard with greed 
To win the promised gain of speed. 

Ah, maddened soul ! I said her Nay, 
And briskly foamed along my way. 
While swifter still that vessel span 
And fiyted from the sight* of man, 
Although I know not how it fled, 
If underneath or o*verhead ; 
For where it span a wondrous light 
Of dazzling pinions dimmed the sight. 
And when the glory skyward shone 
The mere was clear and we alone. 



THE ENCHAXTED VOYAGE. 187 

The deed was done, my sin complete, 
And vengeance came on speedy feet ; 
For scarcely, could I turn to gaze 
Along the prow for landward haze 
Before a flying 'larum passed 
That cried above our tallest mast : 
'Behold, O waves, behold these men, 
And hold them till I come agen!' 

Then wept Cornelie, 'We are lost. 
For that was Jesus tempest-tost. 
And thou deniedst him, and we 
Are dungeoned in a gateless sea.' 

Had any man such omen spoke, 
I would have dealt him mortal stroke, 
So arrogant was I in mind, 
xA^nd sudden fierce to humankind. 
Yet soothfully had she divined 
Our crowning sin and coming woe. 
Alas ! as often haps below, 
The innocent was doomed to share 
Sin's punishment and sin's despair. 



XXVIII 

"The malediction hath not failed, 
For, since it larumed, we have sailed- 
O Jesus ! how we sail thy seas 
To win a port that ever flees. 
To win the land that gave us birth ; 
Yea, that or any alien earth I 



I 88 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

How often hath our o-alley spanned 
A world where many cities stand; 
Where gladsome creatures throng the ways 
And thankful belfries call to praise; 
Where flowrets bloom and branches swing 
And insects hum and birdlets sing; 
Where even brutes tread fragrant turf 
And lusty shores withstand the surf; 
How often round such pleasant world, 
How woful often have we whirled, 
And found it but a howling nest 
Of demon waves that never rest ! 

All earthly forms, all coastwise shapes, 
The haughty cliffs, the prowling capes. 
The very mountains huge and hoar 
That sentried otherwhiles the shore, 
And beckoned us from zone to zone, 
Have vanished into graves unknown. 
Yea, fiery isles that sunward rolled 
Their solemn smokings, fold on fold, 
Like giants burning sacrifice 
And waving incense tow'rd the skies; 
Or, seen through oceanic night, 
Now panted breaths of filmy light. 
Now held a lurid shaft aloft 
Whose chapter reached the starry croft; 
These, too, have flyted from their posts 
As utterly as shriven ghosts. 

The elfin picture-lands that slide 
From beetling- cliff or mountain side 
Deep into gulfs of liquid steel; 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. I 89 

And, smiling far below the keel, 
Bewitch the sailor with their guiles 
Until he sees hesperian isles 
Of verdant grove and sunny knoll, 
And hears their belfries call his soul ; 
E'en these enchantments of the deep, 
These wizard dreams of ocean's sleep, 
We sought with care through many seas, 
And found them not — not even these ! 



XXIX 

^'No frothing jowl of wolfish main 
But we have fronted it in vain. 
No shouting surge, no snarling bar, 
Will fling the gates of death ajar. 
No bloody haunt of pagan men, 
No pirate's lair, no monsters den. 
Will suffer us to draw anigh. 
And hail its cruelty, and die. 
No land we meet — no land — no land ! 
No, not the humblest beach of sand. 
No matter how we span its girth, 
W^e cannot find the winsome earth, 
Nor aught but ocean's heaving graves, 
An endless charnelhouse of waves. 
Oh, what a hell the deep may be! 
There is no horror like the sea. 

Time also vanished, like the shore; 
Omniscient Time knew us no more. 
W^e wrote in books the dreary days 



190 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Till record stopped in stark amaze. 
How might we credit such a thing! 
The months advanced on tireless wing; 
The years, the lustres, filled their lot; 
We reckoned them, believing not. 
We numbered, numbered, numbered oft, 
Nor yet believed, but rather scoffed ; 
Denying that our woful breath 
Was overdue to cheated death; 
Denying that the friends we sought, 
The foes we dreaded, all were nought. 



XXX 

"Another horror! We were doomed 
To gaze upon the wrecks that boomed 
And signalled vainly for relief. 
Wherever tore the ambushed reef. 
Wherever gorged the stealthy shark, 
Wherever lurched a riven bark, 
We hasted, spite of helm and sails. 
And endless wrath of heady gales. 
No idle prayers, no hopeless sighs. 
No last despairs, no bubbling cries. 
Of ocean folk beneath the skies. 
But there we ride, we ever ben 
Beholders curst of living men. 

No rest ! no calm ! Forever bruised 
By fronting storms, our galley cruised 
Through tropic blaze and polar cold. 
Through mighty meres, unguessed of old, 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. IQI 



From foaming waste to foaming waste 
With headlong, bHnding, maddmg haste, 
Only to witness everywhere 
Incessant woe and wild despair. 



XXXI 

"Two hundred years we fared alone. 
Two hundred years my heart was stone, 
So wicked hard I would not deign 
To utter moan, nor even feign 
Desire to holpen shipwrecked soul. 

But yestereve, outworn with dole, 
And yearning once again to walk 
About my childhood's home, and talk 
With men of hopeful, gladsome heart, 
I called my kinsmen here apart. 
Bemoaned my sin and prayed for grace 
With weeping that from face to face 
Ran burning hot and swelled apace 
Till even rugged marineers. 
Who heard us, melted into tears. 

Then once again returned the low 
Unearthly sigh of yore-ago. 
No longer breathing threat and moan. 
But loving sweet in word and tone. 
It fell, I thought, from starry choirs. 
And yet it frighted not the ear; 
It had a sound of golden lyres. 
And yet it whispered silver clear; 
It seemed to bid me bend the knee, 



192 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

And yet it gently breathed to me 
This word, as sweet as word can be: 
'To-morrow morning shalt thou find 
A work befitting humbled mind ; 
Have mercy on thy fellow men, 
And enter into peace agen.' " 



XXXII 

Such was the Ocean V^agrant's tale, 
A story like some ghostly wail 
From awful torture-chambers, built 
By mighty wrath for wondrous guilt. 
Where yet a little hope remains 
And struggling pinions shake the chains. 
And when he ended it, a groan 
Fulfilled the ponderous galleon. 
As though the very ship did feel 
Remorse from topmast down to keel. 

Meanwhile that company of four. 
The seekers after Holland shore. 
Nor paled to hear, nor looked around. 
As though it were familiar sound ; 
But barkened dumb, with drooping eyes 
And humid cheeks and gentle sighs. 
And shaking lips that prayed within. 
Beseeching grace for stubborn sin: 
The saddest human souls, I trow, 
The wildest, weirdest in their woe, 
That ever ploughed the rounded sea, 
Or ever bowed the contrite knee. 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 1 93 

XXXIII 

Our hero, witnessing their sorrow, 
A\'as moved to uttermost compassion, 
And, judging their repentance thorough, 
At once began in sequent fashion 
To hum and haw such comfortings 
As suited best his own emotion, 
Without much questioning if things 
\\^ould work according to his notion. 

''No doubt," he granted, "sin is awful. 
An' your career has been unlawful. 
You've kinder been ambition-bitten, 
A leetle like old mother Britain, 
An' wrought no eend of peccadilloes 
In tearin' round to rule the billows. 
I must allow you've raised a rumpus 
About as big as chaps can compass. 
You've mowed a mons'ous swath of trouble, 
An' trampled feller men like stubble. 
An' made your guilt appear the greater 
By stickin' at it like all nater. 

But change of heart an' change of goin' 
Are also wuth a moment's showin'. 
You've turned your back on lyin' Baalam 
An' aimed your fig'ger-head for Salem ; 
You've saved at least two feller mortals 
From slippin' through the ghostly portals ; 
An' sence I've been a Yankee stomier 
I never met a Dutch Reformer 
Who seemed in penitence more hearty 



194 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Than yoii, includin' all your party, 
From whence I draw a smart assurance 
You've reely broke from Satan's durance 
To seek a berth among the chosen, 
With all aboard, from cook to boasun. 

XXXIV 

"Besides, I find a hopeful smatter 
Of palliation in the matter. 
Your past has kinder been your master 
In sin as well as in disaster. 
It grabbed you at the first beginnin'. 
Before you squarely thought of sinnin'. 
An' when it fairly got you under. 
It dragged you down to blood an' plunder, 
An' through a sort of necromancy. 
That wasn't strictly to your fancy, 
It made you grind a grist of evil. 
For which I mainly blame the deevle. 

In short, you've been predestinated 
To walk the very road you hated ; 
An' therefore I should say for sartin 
The surest way to do your cartin 
An' find the marciful pertection 
Would be the doctrine of election. 
Election is Apollyon's horror; 
It brimstones hell like old Gomorror, 
An' raises scalds on Gog an' Magog 
As broad acrost as Lake Umbagog, 
An' scorches every imp to cinder 
Who tries to chuck it out o' winder. 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 1 95 

That doggamy is your reliance; 
Astride of that you'll bid defiance 
To terrors, doubts an' suchlike temptins' ; 
An' when creation runs to emptins' 
When all the tribes of men an' sperrits 
Are jedged accordin' to their merits, 
You'll see yourselves as high as any, 
If Downing's word is worth a penny. 



XXXV 

"After your rough an tough probation 
No doubt you'll find a consolation 
In makin' sech a hahnsome showin' 
While shootin' stars an trumpets blowin' 
Reveal to every kind of Hessians 
The emptiness of mere perfessions 
Without a sure an' solid standin' 
Upon the creed of Plymouth Landin'. 

In that arousin' day the sinners 
Won't keer for drinks before their dinners ; 
In vain they'll talk of keerds an' smokin', 
An' try to brave it out by jokin'; 
They'll soon begin to want a shelter 
An' start for cover helter-skelter. 
With graves ajar beneath their noses 
An' saints a-shinin' round like Moses, 
How they will jump an' dodge an' travel 
To keep from slumpin' under gravel, 
An scoot acrost lots limber- jinted 
Whichever way their snoots are pinted, 



196 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

But tucker out at last, an' foller 
Apollyon down to Brimstone Holler !* 

But you, the children of election, 
Ordained to keep the right direction, 
Or only sidlin' out by seasons 
For practical an' pressin' reasons 
(As granthers, when the way is stony, 
Take medder paths, to spare the pony) 
You, knowin' well your sartin callin', 
Won't mind to see the skies a-fallin' ; 
You'll stand around as stiff as steeples, 
An' mayhap jedge some casyal peoples. 



XXXVI 

To suchlike cheering talk our chief 
Did treat these patient sons of grief. 
Whereof he babbled knowing little, 
But holding every jot and tittle; 
For while he never once debated 
But Hell would swallow those he hated, 
He thought that whoso roused his pity 
Would smoothly reach the golden city; 
And doubtless he foreshadowed certain 
Exhorters now before the curtain, 
Who, whether orthodox or arian. 
Are certainly humanitarian. 

* For a similar sermon, by a Georgian camp-meeting 
exhorter, see the New York Independent of July 12, 
1873. Diversity of time and place cannot mar the miity 
of genius. 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. IQ/ 

Yet being practical in mind, 
And by orig'nal sin inclined 
To spice his theologic quirks 
With Satan's sauce of goodly works ; 
As, also, bearing great affection 
To martial modes of intellection 
(For instance, loving much to pour 
His views along a rifle's bore) 
He shortly ceased to prate about 
The topics fate has wrapped in doubt. 
And begged his hosts to take in hand 
The alien swarms who plagued our land. 

With fervent Yankee zeal he prayed 
The Flying Hollanders to raid 
Britannic Majesty's possessions; 
Or, failing this, to mount the Hessians 
And sink the wizard fleets that drew 
Their legions over Neptune's blue ; 
Or, missing these, to make a run 
In search of Freedom's setting sun 
And garb our needy continentals 
In mediaeval regimentals. 

Ah, moment lost! If Downing might 
Have won these ancient men to fight, 
Brittania's unicorn had sunk 
Beneath their veteran skill and spunk. 

XXXVII 

Betimes our worthy chieftain strolled 
In wonder through the rover's hold. 
Surveying riches manifold : 



THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

A spoil of Af ric shells and whorls ; 
Embroidered bags of Persian pearls ; 
Cathayan pipes with ivory stems ; 
Arabian falchions sheathed in gems ; 
The glossy bars of an argent mine, 
And caskets brimmed with brilliants fine 
A hundred leathern sacks, or more, 
Of gold in sequins, gold in ore ; 
Sandal coffers of Indian shawls ; 
Ebony thrones from Java's halls ; 
Opulent bales of silver braid 
And sheeny silk and stiff brocade ; 
The spice and gums and healing balms 
Of sunny islands clothed in palms ; 
While aloes, frankincense and cloves 
Exhaled a steam of tropic groves. 

All these he saw and coveted. 
For Downing ? No ! No miser he ! 
He sued for starving ranks that bled 
In shoonless feet beyond the sea. 
Yea, high and noble were his longings 
To raise a loan on these belongings, 
And pay our troops in money minted. 
Instead of money merely printed. 

But no ! The Wanderer of Time 
Had done with battle's flame and grime. 
In vain might glory's trumpet sound; 
He answered, 'T am homeward bound," 
And, speaking thus, would calmly raise 
His brow with such a far-off gaze 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 1 99 

As often glorifies the eye 
Of mortal who is near to die. 

Moreover, Downing's child began 
To love this sorrow-hunted man, 
As angels love a mourning soul ; 
So tender-swift to spare him dole 
That ever, when her sire might dare 
Renew his plea for martial ware 
She checked his zeal with silent prayer; 
She hushed him, though he never heard 
From those seraphic lips a word. 

So, onward over shining seas, 
Without a sail, against the breeze, 
The lonely, wizard vessel flew, 
No longer thrust before a crew 
Of tempest-fiends, but gently pressed 
From hailing crest to hailing crest 
By loving wings unseen of men. 
The very galleon seemed to ken 
That now at last she neared her home 
And presently might cease to roam ; 
For all about her prow she sang, 
And carols round her rudder rang. 
And every rope had tuneful lips ; 
She was the joy fullest of ships 
That ever ploughed a gladsome wave. 
Although she flew to find a grave. 



200 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

XXXVIII 

The morning came, the last of moil 
For those who sought their natal soil ; 
And, through the filmy wraiths that drave 
In shoals from steely wave to wave, 
They sighted Holland's seaward bounds, 
Her endless dikes, her misty sounds ; 
And stealing on from shape to shape, 
By yawning bight and crawling cape. 
Anon they plainly spied afar 
A tangled wood of mast and spar. 
Displaying flags of all mankind, 
With roofs in thousands ranked behind. 
While here and yonder lofty spires 
Uplifted psalms from brazen lyres, 
Carilloning o'er earth and sea 
That queenly city's jubilee. 

And this was Amsterdam. Her sails 
Were all around them. Marvelling hails 
Pursued and met these otherworld 
Vikings veering with canvas furled 
And flaunting flags of ages gone. 
They answered not ; they speeded on, 
All landward gazing; every eye 
Intent with yearning hope to spy 
A shape familiar to its gaze, — 
A ghost, at least, of other days ; 
Intent perchance to find a spot 
Where lasting quiet might be got. 
The peace that man nor cyclone stirs 
The restfifl peace of sepulchres. 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 201 



XXXIX 



But nearing now their longed for goal, 
A ghostly transformation stole 
Athwart these searchers after land. 
A mighty spell, a spectral hand. 
Perchance the fume of earthly airs, 
Unbraced the kindly, tender snares 
Of miracle that held them young; 
xA.nd all the bygone years that hung 
Above them fluttered down ; and they 
Were smitten wrinkled, bent and grey. 

A froth of silver overroUed 
The captain's wealth of curling gold. 
And furrows crept adown his cheek. 
And palsy made his stoutness meek. 
The rounded grace and rosebud hue 
Of fair Cornelie Vanderloo 
Fell tremulous and white and spare 
As lated stars in morning's glare. 
From breath to breath the awful change 
Increased in might, took wider range, 
Perv^aded spirit, blood and bone. 
And swiftly laid the strongest prone. 

Erelong the leader stood alone. 
With aged head in meekness bent. 
And prayed, "Receive us ! we repent." 
One moment stood with lifted face ; 
One moment claimed the Heavenly grace; 
Then sate, nor quitted more his place. 
Cornelie, now^ a withered dame, 



!02 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Embraced with tears the shrunken frame 
Of him whose fated nuptial band 
For ages gemmed her Hving hand, 
Both bowing heads of silver hair 
And moving ashen lips in prayer. 

The greybeard sailors, ghostly pale 
And shaking, leaned against the rail, 
Or feebly fumbled tools of rust 
And cordage crumbling into dust. 
For all the galleon was fraught 
With swift decadence into naught; 
The sails were dropping mould and blight ; 
The spars blew off in slivers white; 
The oaken sides and bolted deck 
Relaxed to flimsy, yawning wreck; 
Each onward fathom tow'rd the quay. 
Wrought lustres, cycles, of decay. 



XL 

Then Esther Downing, weeping, cried 
"O arms of mercy, open wide !" 
But quickly turned her piteous stare 
On Vanderdecken, blanching there. 
And watched him with the stony eye, 
Of one who sees her dearest die. 

Her father, gazing where she signed, 
Beheld the fated chief reclined. 
As white as man already dead, 
His breath a sigh, his vision fled, 
But glad in all his patient face, 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 2O3 

Like one who fainting wins the race ; 
While close beside, companions still 
As when they followed him in ill, 
His kinsmen paled in mortal chill ; 
And farther on, in groups of death, 
His sailors gasped away their breath; 
All waning into swift eclipse, 
Yet wearing on their pallid lips 
The gentle, thankful smile of those 
Who enter joy through gates of woes. 

So much the father saw ; and then 
He fled before those ghastly men. 
He caught his child within his arm 
And burst away in mad alarm ; 
He crossed the sways and vanishings 
And dusty whirls of fading things ; 
And, leaping ere the bulwark broke. 
Fell gasping-dumb 'mid living folk, 
A city trampling, all a-stare, 
To see a galleon melt in air. 



XLI 

The vessel followed him ; it stole 
In silence on ; it touched the mole 
With gentle rustle, like to moss, 
Or fungus sprays, or thistle floss, 
A sigh of ruin barely heard, 
Though never starer murmured word. 

Arising, Downing turned to gaze. 
But only spied a drowsy haze 



204 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

Of ashy motes and filmy scales 
In place of hull and masts and sails. 
Inert and pale it towered high ; 
One solemn moment stained the sky; 
Then slowly into distance waned. 
And when it vanished, naught remained ; 
The ocean-pest had ceased to roam ; 
The voyagers had found their home. 
But e'en to that upstaring throng 
Descended grateful drifts of song, 
The chorusings of raptured sprites 
Already nearing Eden's heights ; 
To whom replied a welcome-psalm 
From courts of golden crown and palm. 

Then, peering downward through the tide 
Of verdant crystal, men espied 
A pulverous settling, frail as dawn, 
That glimmered, shuddered, and was gone. 
Thin waters, woven through with braid 
Of trembling sunbeams, overlaid 
The formless, stagnant residue 
Of one whom every tempest knew. 

So endeth oft the noblest plan 
Of life's mysterious vagrant, Man. 
He strug-gles long with hostile waves ; 
He triumphs, calls the winds his slaves ; 
He hastens, thinking not to drown. 
And, shouting, "Land !" goes swiftly down. 



THE ENCHANTED VOYAGE. 20$ 

XLII 

Our chief in marvel raised his head, 
"At least it fetched us here," he said; 
"And that is sartinly a sign 
That Goodness favors our design." 

Thereon he rived the burgher jam 
And calmly entered Amsterdam. 
But scarcely had he bent his feet 
To thread a dusky, devious street, 
With lofty fronts on either hand. 
The quaintest mortal ever planned, 
Ere one who passed him in the fry, 
On tiptoe wheeled with bulging eye, 
And shooting forth a bony wrist, 
Commenced to shake his honored fist, 
Salaaming all the while in tone 
And dialect like Downing's own. 

Our hero turned, in vast amaze 
At Yankee speech in Holland ways. 
He turned and saw a longlimbed man 
As lean and limber as rattan. 
With lanky hair and hollow cheek 
And quizzing lips and sharpened beak, 
Wlio seemed to his delighted eyes 
An angel sent from downcast skies. 
In songful drawl the stranger spake : 
"I ruther guess there's no mistake 
About your being Shiloh's lion, 
The chap who saved our A'^ankee Zion." 

Then, ramming fists in trouser-pockets. 



206 THE DOWNING LEGENDS. 

He spouted tidings bright as rockets ; 
Rehearsing how the bird of freedom 
Had ripped the sawdust out of Edom 
And hustled every bull of Bashan 
Across the bounds of all creation ; 
By which he meant our sires had smitten 
The hosts of Hessiandom and Britain, 
And won for Downing and descendants 
The stars and stripes of independence. 



XLIII 

Our hero smiled with satisfaction, 
But promptly turned his thoughts to action. 
He rang the bells, convened the city, 
And made a speech, a loan, a treaty; 
Then, striking out some Yankee notion 
(Unknown to us) of crossing ocean. 
He turned his back on plans of slaughter 
And journeyed home with gun and daughter. 

Thus fortuned it that Shiloh's hero 
Reduced no Hessian states to Zero, 
But hammered ploughshares from his sabre 
And settled down to farming labor. 
Ah, who could trust the w^eird narration 
If Downing did not mean a nation, 
Our Yankee wit and brawn and bravery, 
Our hate of Beelzebub and slavery! 



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